Recently my blog was visited by another blogger who not only liked many of my posts but also started following it. As a courtesy I too visited her blog and found that this one wrote about all things philosophical. Now I am one of those people who absolutely shuns philosophy because I cannot sit quietly in a corner and spend ages thinking about something abstract. I am a very visual person who even sees the spelling of the word before it forms an image or evokes a feeling within me. Besides, I never thought that I had the time and inclination to be a brooding thinker. To me the search for self and trying to find meaning in everything that happens around is an exercise for the more evolved people and not for someone ordinary like me. It is something in which people with a more spiritual and philosophical bent of mind indulge. The people with a bigger purpose, the ones who can devote their lives to humanity, live the lives of hermits, have a connect with God and enough time to sit and introspect. It is for those who can devote hours sitting idle, meditating and pondering over issues no one cares about much and not for someone like me who cannot think beyond her worries regards her family, work and the little things that matter. It is really not important for me to know why the apple fell down or whether God exists or not or what is the meaning of life? I would rather have fun enjoying my freedom than frustrating over what is true freedom.
I remember a conversation I had with one of my classmates from school whom I’d caught up with almost after a decade. I told him that I had not changed much and was very much the same person as I was in school. To which he said, “You have not evolved much if you have not changed.” I disagreed totally and defended myself with the argument that a seed changes into a tree and that is a part of its growth but in essence it remains the same. The seed of a mango does not grow into a coconut but into a mango tree and that does not mean that it has not evolved. So, I countered that if I was still the way as I was as a kid in school it did not mean that I had not evolved. Maybe it is the very attitude that I was born with that makes me who I am.
Abhay faced my fury even after our conversation was long over and he said something philosophical to appease me and make light of the situation. I remember having told him to not to tell me about other people’s philosophy as I had my own to live by and I did not need to borrow from other people’s which they had in turn borrowed from some other source.
This was some 15 years or so back and as the fruit ripens, so does the man mature, after many rains, suns and blows. I have mellowed down a bit, having braved many storms though there are some who feel that I still sting and they try to counter it with silence. As I browsed through the blog, I realised that everything around us whether science or art is philosophy because to question and the quest to find answers to it, is philosophy. A mundane question like what should I cook is also philosophy because philosophy seeks to answer the most fundamental questions which are paramount to the existence of the human race and ask any lady of the house how many times in a day she asks this question to herself to maintain peace, sanity and harmony in the family, the basic unit of the society. So, as long as questions like these haunt me and take my sleep away, I am doomed to be a philosopher.