To be or not to be…pragmatic

I have watched the movie October around a year ago and then I planned to write a review about it and then like several of my plans it took off, then limped, and then died out of negligence for life got in the way. After about a year, I hardly remember much about the movie to write a review, but I still remember where it hit me.

The protagonist is a carefree young boy who’s breezing through life aimlessly, till one day when a girl from his class accidentally falls down the building before him that life is no longer the same for him. He barely had any relationship with the girl, yet when he sees her in that vegetative state in the hospital he is shaken. He cannot shake off that uneasiness, so he visits her every day. He gets so lost in caring for the girl and supporting her family in this hour of crisis that he loses track of his own college and work. His friends ask him to get over her and think through what he’s doing with his life, to which he replies- “tum log kya har cheez soch samajh ke karte ho?"

To translate it loosely, ‘Do you guys think through all your actions’?

And that’s where it hit me…

Do I? Should I?

Should all my actions look like they have a direction and more importantly a pragmatic direction of life…Should I accept or question the assumptions of a pragmatic life, that no matter what moves you, you have to go on building your life the way society expects you to build…OR

Should I do a Gautam Buddha on life i.e. leave everything and seek the answers till those thoughts mellow

How should we handle that feeling of uneasiness that we sometimes encounter when we see something so moving around us but comfortably let go for the sake of building our lives in the way we’re expected to build. After all the order that is drilled each day in us by the society is built on the assumptions that each of us should strive for a career and earn money and find love and have a family and buy a house and so on.

What is the answer to this dilemma?

I do not know what the answer to this dilemma is. To each his own.  

But my pursuit is really small, at least acknowledge that there EXISTS a dilemma, that there are people who are tormented by these dilemmas and who refuse to walk the pragmatic path, and that they deserve admiration and not flak for walking the road less travelled. Only the brave takes the path less travelled and they should be celebrated and not berated for their choices.

Why does everything have to add up and look like a piece of a bigger design, and as Joker in Batman said "Everyone you meet always asks if you have a career, are married, or own a house, as if life was some kind of grocery list. But none ever asks you if you're happy "

Why can’t we have some pursuits of heart that just come up when we’re moved by something, which do not fit into our grand design of life, which look like random meanderings. Shouldn’t we embrace them, if we happen to have one. As Vincent Van Gogh said “Normality is a paved road and no flowers grow on it”

It should not all add up otherwise it becomes a paved way that has no flowers. Let there be meanderings, let there be fruitless pursuits. In the long run these twists enrich you and make the unbearable lightness of being, just a tad bit more bearable.

As for me, every time I have to thrust on myself a pragmatic choice, a little bit of me dies in the process and there are pieces of me missing that were squandered at each of these crossroads.

And so, I have to agree with Andrei Tarkovsky that “I have always liked people who can’t adapt themselves to life pragmatically”

Because they are a little less boring than all those people who have figured it out 