What Do People want?

 

From Berita MMA, September 2024.

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Naysayers abound!

It looks like we are still immersed in the euphoria of our recent close to 500km ride from Srinagar to Leh, Ladakh. Friends and well-wishers continue wishing their felicitations and, in not so many words, tell us to thank our lucky stars (or the Almighty) that we were still able to complete the crunching climb of 7,000 metres at this age.

One of the fellow cyclists in the group did not take kindly to that phrase. He had put in so much effort throughout his life to keep fit. After leaving school and leading a more sedentary life, he decided to go back to his active ways after seeing his father suffering from various complications of diabetes.

From someone who jogged around the housing estate, he graduated to running long distances, hiking, and cycling. By a twist of fate, he found other fellow ‘madmen’ who shared his eccentricity amongst his neighbours.

Hence, he started the weekend sorcery of commitments to hiking, running, and cycling. The avalanche in the weekend noradrenaline rush was enough to keep the mind and body going over the week. All that came with a price, of course. He lost party-going friends, and he rarely got invited to functions. If the Cures were in love with Fridays, my friend was with the weekends.

Saturday nights were not the time to indulge and party all night long. Family birthday functions soon became a chore as he kept looking at his watch when it was past 10 pm. He had to limit himself to that one drink, quickly becoming a wet blanket and a bore to others as he wanted to catch that well-needed nap before the early headstart the next morning.

Along the way, well-meaning, unwelcome advice from friends and relatives alike also came. They often quoted a seemingly healthy youngish so-and-so dropping dead like a fly after a trivial activity. And they would sow the seed of fear and uncertainty. Life is already unpredictable enough. Do we need these doomsday prophets to spread more confusion about what lies ahead of us?

He believed that deep inside, these people have an innate desire to dominate and suppress. Unable to see others doing things which push the boundaries of possibilities, they discourage others. Seeing someone slimming down will pop their antennas to suggest diagnoses such as diabetes or occult cancer. They jump to offer a shoulder to cry on the moment you get diagnosed with a chronic illness. On the sly, they are happy you are sick. They have one negative point to run the other down over. It looked like they loved to see others sick. They must have been vultures in their past lives, patiently waiting for the dead to breathe their last breath before they devour.

So when these people congratulate you for work well done, they were the same people who gave you anxiety, questioning your whole trajectory of life as well as throwing a spanner into your well-thought path to self-improvement. Remember not to sneer at them, as no one knows what lies ahead. They may actually have the last laugh and say, "I told you so!"

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Fear of the unknown?

The Lost City of Z (2017)

It was a time when wealthy British aristocrats would amuse themselves with risky expeditions to savage lands to examine the lesser beings in 'uncivilised' territories. They would study them like guinea pigs, record their habits for future references and in the process rob them blind of precious metals and of a rich civilisation. It was a time just before the onset of World War One and Major Percy Fawcett is seconded to the Royal Geographical Society to do some surveying work in the interiors of Bolivia.

Fawcett does his work and returns but not without realising that, unlike his contemporaries who think that the Amazon natives are anything but civilised, he feels the land holds the remnants of an advanced culture.

After a failed return trip to discover the lost city that he calls 'Z', his life gets embroiled in the Trench War. Injured, he is refrained from pursuing any further expeditions. The calling proved too strong. On the insistence of his eldest son, he made a final attempt to the lost city. The fate and whereabouts of both of these explorers remain a mystery till today. Multiple search parties returned empty-handed. The consensus among most lies between being killed by natives and living blissfully with the natives.

Even though the film is quite slow moving, it did manage to create the tension of the conflict of a man having to decide between leaving behind a young family and missing the crucial growing years of his children, as these expeditions take years altogether, and wanting to achieve something in his life. Should you attempt the hold more than you can grasp or be happy with the strand of straws that you have? Should we let fear of the unknown determine our future? Should we be content with our lives? Is there a limit to satiety? Is contentment the panacea for all evils in the world?