Symbols

“Why are you obsessed with death?”

“No, I am not.”

“Well, you are. Because you are not afraid to talk about it.”

“Yes, that’s right. I know I am going to die, and so are you. No matter how much I love you, I know you are going to die. Also, It’s symbolic as well, and not actual always.”

“What do you mean by symbolic and actual?”

“People die actually, and people die symbolically. You’ve not yet thought about how one can die symbolically. That’s all, but now this thought is not going to leave your mind.”

“Stop it, please. Why talk about it, even if this is going to happen.”

“Not talking about it also not going to stop it. Being immortal is the worst thing that can happen to us.”

“I wouldn’t say so.. but still stop. I don’t want to talk now.”

.. and then I stopped with a smile, knowing the person was going to die, either before me or after me. Things I did, Things we, in general, do in love will hold no meaning after some time, this is death. Death is not just limited to the human body being dead. Everything that begins, dies. There is a softer word ‘end’ for it. Knowing that everything is going to die gives another level of freedom which is inexpressible, though it might turn one into nihilistic, so be safe lad.

Death just happens, like life happens. There is no point in reacting to it in any emotional manner be it happy or to be sad of it. It is just going to happen, but we are slaves of our wishful thinking. We want output from everything around, everything. We celebrate beginnings, we mourn ends, and we enjoy checkpoints. We need it, I know. As a person who works in corporate, I think if holidays weren’t there I would have to work 16 weeks more, thus I want our civilization to celebrate more and more. Well, who doesn’t need a change? Death is a change as well.

Changes are symbolic, and so is death. Death of dreams, death of god, death of a person as well sometimes; all of it means that it’s no more. The death of your father means that your first go-to person for advice is no more there for you. For this, your father doesn’t have to physically die. The same goes for the mother, your first source of love is not there anymore. Go to a person for love keeps changing but it’s hard to forget the first love, the death of the mother hits hard. Though, they might be present physically present in the same house as you. See, symbols.

Just not death, a lot many things are symbolic. Why is cheating considered bad, if it were a war then your cheating could have caused a big harm to your army, or society or country you are fighting for. Why lying is bad? Because nobody knows who to trust.

Best symbolic practice I found, and I am not sure how correct this is, but smashing the coconut on the floor and breaking it is similar to breaking a skull. Think for a moment, when do we do this ritual? On happy occasions, or on events to keep gods happy. Earlier that was the head of the enemy you won over, you were breaking his skull. But now being a civilized society we had to find a replacement for that and the best thing we could find was a coconut, hard as a skull and had two eyes and nose-like dots on it which made it look like to human skull.

Abuses, on the other hand, were related to things you could do to harm people around you or something that is not good for the betterment of the tribe you are part of. Did you call someone a snake? Because they could bite you in sleep and you would die, and the next day your tribe might lose a battle and it end for everyone. The snake would bite you even if you feed him, so such people who would work against the tribe are called snakes. They are not snakes but their acts were symbolised with what a snake would do.

Let us talk about love. Why is the heart associated with love, hate or feelings in general and not any other organ? It’s common across cultures, with hardly any exceptions. The root I could think of is that it’s not a heart, but a heartbeat. Your heart reacts to emotions more than any other organ. It’s easy to train the brain but harder to train the heart for things. So you break up or someone breaks your heart, they don’t actually, it’s just symbolic. It’s your heartbeat that goes haywire and heartbeat is associated with heart and thus your heart goes haywire and it’s called broke.

You must have heard, “Pen is mightier than sword”. Symbolises that educated people can bring bigger changes than armies can. The best example is Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago, which was the beginning of the Death of the Soviet Union. Symbolic death but yes death, and it was inevitable. Well, Napoleon is another example, who fuelled people to fight for a nation with State-controlled education and gave the British empire a good fight. Later British went on to apply the same strategy in India to fight Indians by destroying the Indian education system with Macaulay’s education policies where he advocated shutting down all the educational institutions where only Eastern philosophy was taught were to be shut down.

“Some die at 25 but are buried later.” Something similar quote is often viral on social media, which is talking about symbolic death. People die symbolically. People die actually. Whether you love them or hate them, symbolic death is more painful than actual. People who betrayed you might be dead to you symbolically. No matter how hard they try or try to make conversation things, but things are dead, they ain’t gonna move. Dead don’t move.

There is stigma around death and there should be, because it crumbles a perfectly working hierarchy of family or society or any organization. This is not good for other people, because your life is not just yours to take. You might meet somebody 10 years later who might need you to save his life. Just hang on. If you want to die and have thought thoroughly about it, means the dream has entered your mind. You got to fight this. Acting on temptations is never good, anyways it will eventually come. Just grow up to handle it well.

Again if you think you should die because your desires are not getting fulfilled then just know that you’ll be born again just to fulfil those desires. These are called attachments as well. Deepest desires will never let you have ‘Moksha’ and you’ll end up in the cycle of birth and death. Thus better to get rid of desires somehow and then die, symbolically of course. Also, you might not want the liberation otherwise you’d miss out on the things you have not done yet that you’d do if you’d get a chance. So you might have a desire to fulfil suppressed desires either in heaven or in the next birth.

What’s the point of all this? Oh, I gave it a thought, what’s the point of writing, or doing anything? At one point I realised that there is no point in even speaking because I strive to be articulate and if I can’t express it the way it should be, there is no point in saying it. On that line of thought, I am (sometimes) tired of speaking because it’s not the best way of expressing myself at the moment. Sometimes I find it in writing, sometimes I don’t and when I don’t, those immature thoughts stay in the drafts of my blogs.

Another thing is that if everything is just a thought before acted upon, then just think. Let your thoughts die instead of you. Thoughts, not you. Again, Symbolically.