Pages

Friday, April 27, 2012

Essay, Struggle Is Life

                         
                       
             Mystery envelops the origin of life on earth. Science has done much to unravel the mysteries of nature, but the grand riddle of life still remains unsolved. But if the origin of life is shrouded in darkness, not so is its character.Its essential feature is struggle. If there is any common element among all forms of life, high or low, it is continuous struggle. Pain and suffering  born of this struggle permeate life, and rightly has Francis Thomson said,
                                      We are born in other' s pain
                                    And perish in our own
          Perhaps this bitterness, this struggle is an echo of God’s judgement on the erring man that he is to earn his bread with the sweat of his face. But the curse has alighted not only  on man but on the entire animate and inanimate creation. The slender stream let struggle with thousand impediments on its forward course. The planets roll round fighting with innumerable attractions and the mountain erects its stony height by piercing hard crust. What unseen fight goes on behind human eyes between a tiny seed and the hard soil which it is to pierce. When the sapling comes out there begins another phase of the struggle, with the fury of the elements, the ravages of animals and the thought lessens of man. The same cruel struggle goes on in the animal world, and so fierce it is there that some times a whole species becomes extinct. The insects that crawl on the ground, the bees that build the hive, the birds that chirp, has each their woeful tale of struggle to tell, if there are men to listen. So struggle goes on not only  on this earth, but in the sky above and in the oceans below. This world is a grand arena where fights go on without end.
         In the life of man is seen the same struggle from the cradle to the grave. Even a foetus in the mother’s womb wages war by sucking the life-blood  of the mother. The cry of  the new-born Bab announces the coming fight of life. The child’s fretting, crying, crawling, and stumbling are but manoevres in a long campaign. When it grows to a man there begins another phase of its fight.
           Man has diverse enemies to struggle with.  first begins his lifelong struggle with the forces of nature. They are either favorable or unfavorable. Man must be wise and strong enough to fight with the  adverse influences and turn the benign aspect of nature to his use. Food and poison are held before man, it is for him to choose the one and reject the other. When we speak of life as a tale of the survival of the fittest, we but lay our stress on this aspect, on man’s continual struggle with natural environments.
          As he grows up then comes his struggle with himself, with his own passions and prejudices. There are sometimes the most dangerous enemies of man and the most difficult to conquer. Just as self-knowledge the most difficult of all kinds of knowledge, so self-conquest is the most arduous of all conquests. We may conquer the whole world  and yet remain a slave to ourselves,  to lust, greed avarice, anger and jealousy. The first and foremost duty of a man, therefore, is to fight and conquer these internal foes. Those who become victorious in this fight are alone entitled to the dignity of man.
         But man is also a social being, living  in society and drawing nourishment from it. To live peacefully in society requires conscious effort, to adjust ourselves to the social environment and derive benefit from its benign aspects demand struggle. Sometimes that social environment is not healthy and therefore inimical to our growth and development. In such causes we have got to fight with society, its prejudices,meaningless and harmful rites and  customs. If we are strong we triumph,dragging the society tied to our triumphal chariot. But if we are weak we succumb and are crushed by our social environment. How bitter can this struggle be, will be evident from the life history of any great social reformer.
              If  man is a social being , he also has a political existence. He lives in a state and is either a citizen or a subject. He struggles for political status, power and privileges.Those  who are independent and those who are dependent fight alike, only in different ways and perhaps with different weapons, but fight there is. In the modern world there is going on a continuous warfare against autocratic power, against vested interests, against the innate selfishness and avarice of the rich and the powerful The cry for democracy is rending the air and thrones and sceptres are being thrown down.
          But the present day man has come to realise that political power alone will not bring him comfort. So he  fights for economic salvation. This economic problem has, of late, begun to usurp men’ s whole attention. The struggle is keenest in this field. Here ruthless competition is driving the poor and the weak to the wall. Men all over the world  are puzzled by the anomaly of modern economic life.There is undoubtedly more food in the world today than there  was half a century ago, yet more people are starving and dying of cold and hunger! Who will solve this problem? Men are struggling to stop this mad struggle, this cut-throat competition, for as Mr. Ramsay Macdonald says,”competition is not the law of life, but of death”; but the end is not in sight.
          All through life, in the high and low spheres, there is present this struggle. This struggle arises in man from his desire to improve his condition. There is in him  an element of Divine discontent which is never satisfied and which drives him from sphere to sphere. His greatness as well as his misery are alike born of this discontent.  So long as this will remain in man, the essence of life will be struggle. As the whole creation is trying to realise itself.This struggle present in all spheres and permeates life from the highest to the lowest;
                        Striving to be man,the worm
                 Mounts through all the spires of form.