Gaurav's Blog

This can usually be found on Twitter.

Somebody e-mailed me about yesterday's post, and said that she didn't believe in the meaning of life. No meaning to life?? The poor, forsaken youth! So off I went in a huff (excusing myself from my computational science tutorial, obviously) to prove to myself and the world that there might be meaning to it all after all.

In a word: why am I alive now (apart from the always present, all covering, "too-scared-to-end-it-all")? Very simply, I don't believe in an afterlife. If I'm having fun now - and I am having fun now - it's something I'll loose the instant I kick the bucket. However bad things get, they're not 'nothing' - nothing being reserved for that time after the end, the final sleep, whatever you want to call it.

What else? Well, from past experience (and to the irritation of someone, I'm sure) I'll say: love. It's not just about previous posts (see my last), or just the astonishing frequency (hey, it's not that bad, okay?) with which I seem to get crushes on girls (it's much lower than it used to be! I swear!). It don't have to be love with a girl or a guy, neither; not even with a person, if you want. You can love: something you create, something you become, even something that becomes you (figure it out). You can love: a pet. A dog. A stranger (every stranger, if you want!). The list of things which you can love (and the list of things which need love) are endless.

It sounds stupid, yeah - whoever or whatever you love, it will pass; she will grow old. He will loose his teeth and hair. They might die - they will die, eventually. Some rules are forever.

"If you love somebody, let them go. If they fly away, they were never yours to begin with. But if they come back, they're yours forever". Bullshit? I think it might be true. The "forever" bit, anyway. They're all in there somewhere, you know - every single person, every friend, every cat, every building, every field, every home, every place that I have stepped, every thing that I have seen and loved - and, I suppose inevitably, every girl I have ever loved - they're all inside me somewhere. I can still remember ... ah, heck. I have thousands, millions, gazillions of memories, glorious, beautiful, amazing memories. Some real, some not. A boat, on a river of water - on a torrent, a flood, my very first Bombay monsoon! And crosses - on a church - jumping into view from behind a bridge. And that's a fraction, the smallest part of the smallest, the most inconsequentially beautiful memories of my life.

The ones which mean something? A cat - a kitten - held fast against a yellow sweater. "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory", on a plane. Crying, on a bed. Friends. Computers. Holding someone so, so close, and wishing it could never end.

Life, it is worth it. Maybe not after you die, but I'm not concerned about that, not really. But it is worth it to me now, and I'm going to insist on squeezing every drop out of it; to take my memories and my emotions, my dreams and my desires, and my hopes and possible futures; to take them all and mix them into a story fit to print. To be able to sit down - sometime, somewhere - and to look back, and to feel good about who I was and where I went and what I did. That, for me, is the meaning of life.

This post was posted by Unknown at 9:12 pm