Illogical

The rose oozes dew-drops to mourn its beauty trapped within thorns. Cravings lose intensity in the very process of fulfillment. The most meticulous plans go awry at the eleventh hour. We stop one step short of our goal. The horizon recedes even as one strives to reach it.

Why is their beauty in the fierceness of the tiger, in the grim aloofness of metallic peaks coated in sunshine, in the anger of waves whipping the shore? We can be repelled and attracted simultaneously. Ambivalence is not uncommon.

This is no platitude but a stark manifestation of life: the rich grow richer and the poor poorer. The talented die in obscurity, while the mediocre succeed.

Life is irreplaceable, but taken for granted and most valued when it is slipping away.

It is great to be young, full of energy and dreams. Rarely do we pause to savor youth’s bounties, yet lure it later with dyes, tonics, tablets and face-lifts. Who spun the impossible myth of the elixir of life? The futile search for it continues.

Ironically, peace, love and happiness are defined by the evanescent rainbow, the fragile rose and the whimsical sunshine.

Why does death target the young and healthy, while the old and ailing linger on? Flowers bloom to fade, fruits ripen to decay, we are born to die.

Rarely do youngsters learn from the errors of parents. Cussedly they prefer to make their own mistakes and stoically bear the consequences.

The illogical appends facets to life, which become integral to it: the baby bawls just as the weary mother picks up her spoon to eat; a veteran cricketer drops an easy catch; the power blinks out as the televised story reaches a climax.

Problems are impartial in that they visit everyone; they are illogical only in apportioning shares. One is overwhelmed by a pimple, another is hounded by a conglomerate of physical, financial and emotional difficulties. Some have it easy all their lives; others toil, struggle and fail.

Love follows and accepts no logic. A mother will defend a wicked offspring. A lover is blind and deaf to danger, religion, warnings and the advice of others. Love makes the diffident unreasonably defiant — and foolish too.

Like fingerprints, no two lives are alike. We are rich or poor, clever or foolish, cruel or kind, ugly or beautiful…. but death equalizes all. Then why the fuss and froth of individual existence, the desire to excel, to get the better of another?

Water gives and sustains life, but as tsunami and a seething unrelenting flood it murders and wipes out everything in its wake. Fire warms; it scorches too.

A whimsical planner imbued the good with the bad, the useful with the harmful. Why?

Life is precious but laced with the untoward — childhood is burdened with studies, youth with trauma of competition and old age with feebleness. Why couldn’t things have been easier for everyone?

But that would be logical, which life isn’t.