Ruminations on a Rain-Soaked Day
Someone once asked me, “If you hadn’t become a doctor, what else would you have chosen?”
I said, “I don’t know… I didn’t know then nor am I any wiser now.”
This stirred a dust storm that rose high, as I pushed deeper into those layers of thought, that I hadn’t visited in a long time. Sometimes I enjoy my rumination. It doesn’t lead me anywhere nor shed bright light on some important aspect of life. Yet when there’s ample time, when the word hurry is not found at all, I love to think randomly bereft of any logical direction.
“The decisions that I made and the path I chose or declined at that time—were they right? And if I had followed a different path, would it have brought greater success and more happiness than I have now?”
I really have no answer. By the time one reaches my age, one instinctively realises that, rather than knowing what one knows and fully understands, one becomes acutely aware of what one doesn’t know and does not understand. And this portion of unknown or non-emergent knowledge and understanding is very, very large—this much becomes crystal clear.
“None of us have complete knowledge about ourselves or our place in society, creation, nature, and the universe at large… No matter how wise and accomplished a person thinks they are, it’s just not possible.”
They may be masquerading or unintentionally fallen for their own thoughts of being placed somewhere in a higher echelon—fooling themselves in the process. Or perhaps, submerged in their careers, their towering achievements, or simply in surviving the questions life asks, they may have neither felt the need nor found the time to think about these matters. “Frivolous!” they might have thought.
But the question stands: are we expected to have some sort of knowledge? Should we be knowing not all, but a little bit—about our place in society, nature, and the universe at large? Perhaps not. Perhaps flowing along in the stream of living without much thought is life, and nothing more than that.
“Still, the questions in my mind do not retreat—they stand their ground. Are we meant to use our intelligence to try and understand the mysteries of the visible and invisible universe? Perhaps we are not meant to know much. Yet even to grasp a tiny fragment of this vast cosmos while alive—that itself may be a path worth walking, among the many others that life offers.”
