BrainGrain

Let the world change you, and you can change the world.
-Ernesto Che Guevara

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The Ramblings of My Lost Heart

I felt my tears roll by

With none of my feelings on standby.

I felt something inside me snap

Unbeknownst to me, my soul went for a nap.

I felt myself thrust into a vacuum

Dark and damp, in it life had no room.

I felt my heart,young and unblemished

Grope in the dark, trying to fathom the ends of this business unfinished.

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If you loved someone, you loved him, and when you had nothing else to give, you still gave him love.

From the novel 1984, authored by George Orwell.

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We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for. To quote from Whitman, “O me! O life!… of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless… of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life?” Answer. That you are here - that life exists, and identity; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. That the powerful play *goes on* and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?

John Keating (portrayed by the actor Robin Williams) in the movie Dead Poets Society

(http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097165/).

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Death.

I have always been of frail health. Having suffered a lot of physical pain as a child(and once almost on the verge of kicking the bucket) , death and the process leading to it has always intrigued me. Two recent events compelled (or rather enabled) me to provide shape to my ideas and bring it forth. One was me coming across a dialogue from a movie which lingered on in my mind long after I have seen it. The other was the death of prominent journalist, author and commentator Christopher Hitchens (RIP).

The movie was The Green Mile. Its based on a Stephen King novel of the same name and stars Tom Hanks as the lead actor(a must-see with IMDB rating over 8).The dialogue goes somewhat(but not exactly) like this:

When a person is born on this world, starting from his/her first breath, he/she owes a death to the Earth. Its a debt which one has to pay, from which there is no escape. Its only a question of how and when.

Its a very stoic stance on death.(The ancient Greeks would have loved it.)

Cutting back to Christopher Hitchens. The polemicist was diagnosed last year with oesophagus cancer and battled with it until he expired from related complications at the age of 62. To say that I am aware of his works and that I am a great fan of his would be blatantly untrue. I remembered having vaguely read that he was a celebrated secularist and that he was working on his memoirs with complete disregard for his malady.

To come to point, I came across his last published work for Vanity fair (link:http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2012/01/hitchens-201201), wherein he debated whether stoicism ever helps in the face of mortal pain, invoking Friedrich Nietzsche in the process. In particular, he directed his doubts at the following line that is attributed to the German philosopher:

“Whatever doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.”

In the article, Hitchens argues that the same avenues which aid our longevity but are accompanied with physical pain reduces our taste for life itself and questions whether people would opt for them, if they know what lies in store for them. I personally believe that the most modern medical treatment procedures(atleast the ones for fatal maladies) when accompanied with pain can be viewed as a short and intense substitute for the long and gradual build-up of pain that one would experience if one did not go for the treatment altogether. Plus, the treatments also bring forth a glimmer of hope that one would eventually triumph over his/her malady. A glimmer strong enough to motivate the person involved and more importantly his relatives to take the chance, rather than insipidly waiting for death.

I, as Hitchens once succintly put it, am ‘not afraid of death, but afraid of dying.’ If death was painless: a quick shot in the head or a tasteless gulp of cyanide,then I am all for it,rather than living through a life of incurable pain which leads one to lose the zest for living altogether in the first place. I have to stress here(and stress again and again) that death is not the miracle pill to pull oneself out of life’s miseries. But for one suffering from any incurable malady and who has experienced enough pain to reach a breaking point, is it not?

More and more countries over the world are debating the ethical ins and outs of euthansia. Whereas, it’s detractors say that it’s unethical to assist one in bringing his/her life to an end; is it also not unethical to inflict pain on a person against her will and make her lead a life which she is not braced to live for ?

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