The Helplessness of Life

Do you know that life is like a snakes and ladders board? The very same dice roll that sends you climbing up a ladder can just as easily drop you into a snake's mouth and tumble you down. You can fall prey to a snake even with a high roll, and just as easily, with the smallest move you might catch hold of a ladder and shoot up to great heights. Here, the most isn't always the best, nor is the least always the worst. In life, we lose everything even when we gain much, and sometimes we gain everything by receiving little.

No matter how skilled a player you are, you'll find that after winning streak after winning streak, you suddenly find yourself defeated. And even an unskilled player, losing again and again, can triumph at the final moment. Life doesn't always move to the rhythm of skill. Life isn't about winning—it's about living.

This constant winning and losing in life, this tug-of-war between having and not having—does anyone's life truly stop because of all this? It doesn't, though sometimes it does pause, just for a moment. But yes, even when life doesn't stop, certain things within it do come to a halt. That's when everything feels confusing. Even while living, the question arises in our minds: am I really alive at all?

Someone's happiness stops, someone's laughter stops, someone stops their habitual midnight lamentations or even their perfectly reasonable tears, someone stops living for themselves, someone else stops loving altogether. Even when we don't want to stop, somehow everything just comes to a halt.

This is where people truly die. This is where people truly lose.

You're moving about, going places, eating, doing everything according to routine, fulfilling all responsibilities properly, becoming absolutely perfect like a robot to meet everyone's expectations. But the fact that you've died inside—people can't easily tell. Those for whom you're working your blood to water don't have time to think about this spiritual death of yours. You'll want to abandon everything and run away, but you won't be able to. This is what we call the helplessness of being alive.

Then, many days later, or suddenly one day when your body dies, everyone will observe that day as your death anniversary every year. Yet the fact that you had already died years ago, that first day while still living—no one will ever know... except you. But you don't even have the right to cry at your own death. What was needed was to weep in anguish at witnessing your own death, yet people can only cry when they see someone else's death.

People love and care for the dead far more than they ever do for the living. If they had done even a fraction of that while the person was alive, then perhaps many people wouldn't have had to die before their actual death. So enjoy life before death; know that your suffering doesn't really matter much to your beloved people. They want your well-being, but they don't know what would actually make you well, or even if they know, they don't want to accept it if they don't like it.

The truth is, no one really wants us—they only want the happiness and comfort they get from us.