“If you don’t break your ropes while you’re alive, do you think ghosts will do it after?
Every work of art that has ever been made and has soothed the struggles that have been faced so far. When we are able to relate the pain with the beauty and majority. When we get in contact with the piece of art-poetry, painting, literature, music–our struggles turn tiny before the magnificence of the universal things and chaos. We become humble.
Kabir Das, a 15th-century Indian mystic poet, and saint, whose writings influenced the Bhakti movement, and his verses are found in Sikhism’s scripture Guru Granth Sahib. He grew up in a Muslim family, and never did he associate himself completely with either Hindus or Muslims.
In the words of Kabir Das,
“साधो, देखो जग बौराना । साँची कही तो मारन धावै, झूठे जग पतियाना ।
हिन्दू कहत,राम हमारा, मुसलमान रहमाना । आपस में दौऊ लड़ै मरत हैं, मरम कोई नहीं जाना ।
Translation:
“Saints, I see, The world is mad, If I tell the truth, They rush to beat me, If I lie they trust me. Hindus claim Ram as the one, Muslims claim Raheem, Then they kill each other, Knowing not the essence.”
If we dig the history of the world, we would understand–who and what we are, and where we came from. Be it a war– political, religious, or personal–fought over the idea of one’s own identity, superiority, beliefs, and belongings. If we look back, we would understand how far we have come in search of peace and brotherhood.
Now what we see behind us are all painful memories and bloodstreams shed over attaining ownership, power, and superiority over the other. After all the experiences we had, we still feel insecure about what belongs to us and what we will own in the future. We are insecure beings, when it comes to our beliefs, religion, ideologies, culture, ideas that we hold from the past many years, traditions, etc. And that’s okay because we are just egoistic beings.
Our strong ties that belong to our lineages and roots give us a sense of ownership to fight for our own individuality. We are unable to cut those ego-centric-chords, tied to our pasts. That creates a comfortable bubble–telling us who we are and where we came from–having the luxury of owning something that at least belonged to us in this world definitely pleases us in one way or the other. Anything from the past actually has no one’s claim. Those who owned it are already dead.
This sense of past-belongingness seeks egocentric ways to be known as the best. And we start to compete in this race of identity to prove–who was/is the best/right. That’s where the negative ripples start to take place in society. A society, created for all kinds of individuals to live and to take what the universe has to offer to them.
What we own today is only the kind of life we live, and where we are today at the present moment is ours to claim. What we own today is all about how we live, how we think, what good or bad we bring to society. What the future holds for us and the coming generations depends on our actions of today. That’s all we own, that’s all our belongings. Our individuality lies in our individual actions and what we create today to give to this world.
“All know that the drop merges into the ocean, but few know that the ocean merges into the drop.”
Of course, who and what we are today is twisted and tangled with our individual upbringings, learnings, and experiences. Definitely, we have drawn our individuality from our ancestors and their genetics as well. Moreover, we cannot change where we were born and where we came from and our cultural inheritance, however, we can change what we choose to become, we can always unlearn and learn, and can make different and better choices to break the cycles.