We weren’t unfortunately born in the times of great historical unrest. We haven’t seen great battles being fought and won. No revolutions have made us think and no live performances by Bach or Mozart have enriched our ears and got us riveted. We haven’t experienced slavery and neither have we crossed deserts on foot just to see a glimpse of that forbidden face. We don’t die for love and don’t live for it either. So are we indeed as shallow as we seem? Perhaps! We might not live in the times of great social and political unrest but ‘technological unrest’ for sure. Before we swipe our cards for the latest gadget, it is already outdated. Our struggles mount when we strive to make it on time to work every Monday morning and then throughout the week. We think and someone somewhere has done it already. Originality is rare and Google is what we turn to for guidance. Fine art, like a bottle of wine is just a commodity now. How could we possibly be profound when time is in fact money?
The era of great thinkers, artists, the men of valor and women of innate strength has passed us by to give way to us ‘Doers’. We don’t think. We do and quite a lot actually. We do work – multiple jobs at times. We do live mostly in the almost mechanical patterns already set for us. We do a lot of networking and we do win favors. We do rush almost always. For most of us, even love is not true. It is again something that we do. We are not the temple builders for they died ages ago. We are mere brick layers and that is what we do.
As is characteristic of this era, we do think a lot just for ourselves and for that exact reason I begin to wonder what my role is in this whole scheme of things. I will but unfortunately do and die too at the end. It is the ‘what will I do’ that I must figure out now and once it is all chartered out, I must do it with as much profoundness as I can afford and I must do it all. Am I too late in this realization when more than a quarter of my life has slipped away? Maybe so but maybe I am just coming of true age now. Not the golden age as I wish but the one where we do ‘and’ we die. So what do you do?
