THE GLORY OF ANONYMITY
I can see myself melt away into the warming waters. I was a glacier you see!
But no, I am not mourning it. In a way I am celebrating what the pedantic will call my destruction.
It is not born out from my experience that fashionable concepts of independence, freedom, leadership, assertion, distinctiveness and uniqueness are always beneficial. On the contrary I find hated precepts like surrender, subordination, sublimation, merger, blending, acceptance, losing identity… quite practical and beneficial in many ways.
Standing upright and fighting the cold, breezy winter winds as a gladiator always, got me nowhere, and eventually broke my backbone, you see. I now realize that letting myself go, float into the vastness of my ocean, from whose womb I was born, gave me wider meaning and attachment – and a better sense of fulfilment.
By surrendering to the might of the ocean, by losing my identity, I actually have become a part of a much larger fraternity. At any rate I do not have to struggle for safeguarding my ‘wholeness’, my existence against all odds, and in vain, any more. Come to think, was it not stupid of me to consider my snowy form as so very distinct from water? Was it not merely an illusion – in vain?
Know you, Oh seeker of pride, that I am now transparent rather than translucent, fluid rather than fixated and embedded, capable of taking many shapes and wearing many colours which is better than remaining dead-white standing erect motionless. I am dynamic by surrender while I was static in independence. By losing a narrow purpose I have become more purposeful. By blending with a larger entity I ensured my eternity. By ceasing to be a leader and boss and becoming a follower and a co-worker I have found a sense of fulfilment that always eluded me. Stress that prevented me from deeper inquiry, and ate into my being, is now replaced by tranquillity that lets me fathom the depth of existence in quest unburdened by ambition and recognition.
Show me one entity in the vastness of the cosmos that shines out alone and independently, sans its master. It is just that you chose to be glamourized by the glitter of the servant. Check and you will find that each such glamourous entity is subordinated to another quieter, more dignified and vastly more powerful entity that chose to escape your observation, and ignore you.
And in this arrangement that you so much loath, they both find their harmony. Why should I trouble myself to fight this innate scheme of nature just to please your new-found assertion and earn your approval? Frankly, I am not sure that you are sure that you think well and wisely.
But I know it is difficult to convince all. Not even my children. They will for sure struggle to assert, seek independence from the joint family, to escape this perceived slavery. They will burn and boil and fly off as steam and then as vapour and travel miles to settle back as flakes on any chilly hill they did not choose, or end up in the wilderness of Antarctic or the Arctic as dead ice – serving neither fish, nor birds – and certainly no man other than the crazy ones that, like themselves, go to wilderness only to establish their uniqueness. But as surely as I did, they will one day fall from their vainglorious loftiness to the depths of the ocean, in disintegrating slabs floating as isles for a while before embracing their mother. I hope they will then find the peace I so craved – and now secured.
You may not truly guess how peaceful, how much at harmony and tranquillity I am, for you were never trained, much less encouraged, to experience submission. But trust me, I never experienced this joy of near-nothingness before. Somethingness until now got me just that far: some thing!
[POSTCRIPT: I write this as no more than merely an alternate perspective. No preaching is intended nor an argument offered. You don’t have to like all that I write, of course.]
