LIFE... What is it all about?

Of the many topics that anyone can speak of under the sun, none is more puzzling and thought-provoking as "life". It makes me stare blankly on a starry night sky and question myself what it is after all. Does breathing the air of this world [with its protection, tribulations, and elations], that brings to us a consciousness that we are living in a magnificent blue planet, makes us feel like a speck of sand in the vast space of the cosmos? I think that there is more to expect in life. Life can sometimes seem ugly and bothersome yet it is vibrant and miraculous.

Here on earth is where life is being enacted. Here is its seemy side as well as its loveliness and magnificence. These two seemingly productive characteristics of life can be noticed if we can just be observant of its subtleties. It can be noticed in passionate cries of children at play, in the happy faces of young people in love, and in the first cry of a newborn child. However, it has also its heartbreaks written in the faces of the hungry, in the smothered cries of those who are deprived and in the unconscious waste of a battlefield. Man is totally entangled in the web of life. He, the highest form of creation in the order of things, is not just a mere passing creature in this world. He leaves behind him an ineradicable mark in the universe.

Man is the only being in this world who has consciousness and has the capacity to turn to oneself and "cogitate". For ages he has kept on asking what is life, why does it exist in this world, what is the purpose of his life, and why is there suffering. Actually, each human has his own life story to tell. It is a unique and original story. If only many of us can see the subtle conveyance of a man's face and hands, for they can transmit a lot of ideas that are unspoken about life. They speak to us and we ought to listen.

It would be a reiteration to say that man engulfed in the order of the cosmos is capable of reason, that he stands as the nucleus of creation. However the sanctified image notion now can easily be banished. One may ask himself where is the ideal concept of the human being who are at times and sad to say is diminished to a mere brute. We can get a fitting slice of what life means by this. Seeing a man fitting a single bolt in a machine that he himself has made; seeing children scavenging in stacks of garbage for a living while the elite mindlessly pass with their chaffuer-driven limousine.

Yes, life is after all a riddle and again I find myself staring and flabbergasted by this world. Again, I can find myself staring blankly and with wonder in a starry night sky musing on its radiance and wishing... wishing perhaps I knew what it is all about.