A mortality to die for

The other day Gauri had a very interesting observation – talking about the countdown timers you see above traffic signals (those that count down the time till the signal turns red again or the time till it turns green) she said that we would all be so much happier and stress-free if we had these countdown timers for life as well.  She said that for those signals that don’t have the countdown timer people are always rushing to cross while the light is green because they don’t know how much time they have until it turns red, but if they knew there was still X amount of time then they would be confident of either crossing it or not being able to in the time left, and hence be that much more relaxed about it – the same thing could very well apply to life as well …. or maybe not.

They say that the only certainties in this world are death and taxes and, if we are to believe reports about certain cutting-edge advances in medical science happening as I write this, then we may very well be able to strike death off that list by 2050.  They say we could soon start reversing the ageing process and eventually become immortal by 2050.  And yet, without our mortality would we even remain human?  Would we not be just machines?  What’s the fun of being a machine – unless you are a run-machine, in which case you would get lots of endorsements and money and fame and maybe women will throw themselves at you and … but I digress.  The Mahabharat tells us of Ashwatthama who was cursed with immortality for  sins which shall remain untold here.  But the key thing to note is that immortality is thought of as a curse in this case.  I feel it would well turn out to be a curse in any case.

However, leaving aside immortality for the moment, let’s consider mortality.  The surprising thing about mortality is that although we all know we will die one day, we don’t always live like that is true.  We live like we think we will live forever and I feel that’s a mistake.  Life is very fragile and can be snuffed out at any time.  That’s what I learned one night long back when my car had a very close encounter of a nasty kind with a much larger beast of the concrete jungle with more (and larger) wheels and a decidedly more stupid driver.  It was a simple misunderstanding (at 3am, no less) of the most basic law of physics, with both vehicles thinking they could (and should) occupy the same point in space at the same point in time as well – granted that space and time is a continuum and that time is considered just a fourth dimension but even then we cannot expect it to oblige us to that extent (incidentally 3am is a time when most misunderstandings seem to occur if the number of drunken phone calls to ex’s is any indicator!).  The upshot of it all was that some steel panels got badly mangled and I missed meeting my maker by just a fraction of a second.  Understandably, I was quite shaken up for some time to come – not quite understanding why that fraction of second had gone my way and not the other.  I still wonder about it sometimes.

Or take the natural disaster unfolding in Japan right now – an earthquake followed by a tsunami and the thousands of people it has affected.  They were all probably busily going about their daily business – having lunch, hurrying to a meeting, coming home from school, worrying about the mortgage payments or just enjoying a well-deserved siesta – when somewhere deep under the sea some tectonic plates decided that was the time to shift.  For all I know some long undiscovered volcano miles under the precise location of the next key I am going to type on my keyboard will decide this is the instant to erupt and this post will forever stay unpublished.  Or a meteorite will choose to hit the earth at the exact coordinates of your luxury barcalounger even as you are reading this, sipping chilled beer and trying to ignore your conscience nagging you about that cholesterol-laden steak you had last night.

My point is that we are all mortal, and it would be nice if we recognized it for what it is and enjoyed our own mortality.  We are not going to live forever and there is no point pretending that is so.  We may as well be happy on a day to day basis.  What’s the point of all this hate, envy, anger, and unhappiness about silly things, when it can all dissolve in the blink of an eye.  So go on – take that well-deserved vacation now, eat your juicy steak or enjoy the chilled beer if that makes you happy, say those magic words that can light up someone’s smile, forgive quickly and forget even more quickly, give in to your passion without being apologetic, follow a long-held secret dream, maybe take time to smell the flowers and don’t fret about the bee-sting if you smell the wrong flower, get a dog, chuck that lousy job,  get married or divorced (whatever you fancy), have kids and watch them grow-up without regret, play with colors even if your clothes get messy and don’t worry about mud under your fingernails – in short, get busy living -

coz your mortality ain’t going to wait forever.

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