Deeply Rooted

Everyone, everything, has to be deeply rooted for authenticity.

Gnarled, knuckled roots clutch the earth to anchor hoary trees. Aerial roots grope blindly to procure sustenance for their host.

Every stray cloud can trace its history to a wave, a ripple, a water-drop. Every snowflake bears kinship to a cloud.

We are not stray motes. We all are tendrils curling out from some specific stable core. Young or old, our mental and physical attributes grow out from inherited genes. There are no orphans in the true sense of the word.

Exquisite vases, laces, paintings, songs are born out of the creative talent of artistes. Ironically, even when destroyed, even when not audibly, visually and physically present, they exist as abstract cache in the private limbos of their respective creators. Each note is spun out of the strings of a musical instrument, strung together with other notes into a song which will be sung, hummed and live on. It will remain rooted forever, long after the melody is forgotten.

The stars, planets, satellites swirling, seemingly mindlessly, are firmly tethered to an inviolable orchestrated principle of the universe.

Schizophrenia, obsessive compulsive disorders, neurosis have their provenance in a psyche gone awry. Our family circumstances and experiences contour our behavior. They just didn’t happen by chance.

Family feuds lead to the severest of hostilities. Brothers can be the bitterest foes or greatest allies. But relationships are inextricably raveled in the blood, churned out of its proverbial thickness.

Love, hatred, pain, success, failure — all the positive and negative aspects of life — can be traced to a source. They might erupt, explode, bloom, lie dormant, but — if they exist — grounded they must surely be.

It’s difficult, almost impossible, to yank out habits and cravings from ourselves. They always lurk in crevices, ready to sidle out insidiously and have their way, again.

Each expression that flits across the face was limned by an emotion stirred within. Migrants acquire an identity only if they can put down roots in the foreign soil. It’s horrific to be rootless. You might as well not be, if you don’t belong.

Most important, we have to remain deeply rooted in our convictions, beliefs, hopes, ambition for then only life fleshes out and acquires true dimensions. Strong convictions bring revolutions to fruition.

Profound faith produces saints and martyrs.

Illness is fatal if deeply rooted. You amputate or gouge out the infected spot, where the problem is located, to preserve life or existence. The root of any problem has to be removed. To kill anything you have to uproot it, otherwise young shoots will sprout to breathe and live again. This is true in destroying and preserving life.

But roots require soil; they need to be anchored in reality, which could well be a person, thing, situation, mind, soul.

Rootless, in a void, nothing survives.