To have or not to have?
We
all have wants, wishes and whims. It can be fame, money, love, success or anything
that is appealing about this life on earth. Some of them are met and some aren’t.
But I often wonder which is more painful, to have and lose or not to have at
all. There are multiple human sensibilities at work here.
When one doesn’t get what one wants,
one can rely on imagination. We can think if we had what we wanted, we would do
this or that. Also, hope comes to one’s rescue too. We can always wish for the
elusive want to happen to us. This hope and imagination fuels our journey with
enough optimism to sail through.
It might also happen so that one
longs for something and doesn’t achieve it even after a long time. Then what
happens? Fortunately, we humans are equipped with enough spirit in us that we
learn to live with that reality and begin to look at other wishes to be
pursued.
But what happens when you are given
a taste of your want and then it is taken away? I think that is a deceitful manifestation of
cruelty. Letting one know what it feels like to have something one always
wanted and then taking it away is like twisting the destiny. Here, only
disappointment remains. Yes, one can always argue there is reminiscence. But
what is reminiscence here but a romanticized disappointment?
I think what would be most painful
is the sense of loss. The umpteen rethinks that goes in about what could have
been done to retain it. Did one take it too lightly or way too seriously? Was
it because it came by too easily or was it due to it happening too early? There
is this thought as to what can be done to bring it back. Even if tried, will it
come back at all? The urge to get it back is always there at the back of one’s
mind.
May be, this question of whether to
have and lose it or not have it at all belongs right in the middle of those
ever elusive quests of Life that we have to learn to live with.
Arun Babu