Honestly, do we all weep when the year passes away, or do we all have great parties? There is dancing and celebration, dining and wining, music and toasting. Why? What a good year it was! Why are we so happy at its passing away? Just because we are so sure of the New Year peeping over the shoulders of the old. Similarly, don’t we celebrate each birthday which moves us closer to our end, shouldn’t we be feeling sorry at the approaching end? We all look forward to a new beginning, which is as inevitable as the end. We are firmly rooted in the knowledge that every night gifts us a new morn as she departs, and every Sunday kisses a welcome Monday. All destruction in Nature is creative destruction. The old has to die, to give place to the new. Students celebrate the end of schooling, the end of college, the end of university education. A new discovery always trumpets the end of the old. The invention of the cell phone is a great example. It has mercilessly and joyfully rid us of so many gadgets, and killed so many businesses. Does one see a PCO anywhere now? Cameras, torches, calculators, wristwatches, notebooks, post offices, handwritten letters, etc., are all gone. How easily do we discard an old cell phone and buy the latest version. Grief at the death of a loved one? Is it our desire for the immortality of what we love? Nature in its supreme wisdom has ordained that everything has an end. A “no end” could be a very tragic situation. Can you think where any given situation in your life never ended? Eating, sleeping, drinking, walking, running, talking, reading, laughing, anything. You would give all your wealth for it to end.
Prarthna Saran, President Chinmaya Mission Delhi.
