GROWTH

My Dearest friend

Perhaps we are finally moving toward what Gautam Buddha saw.

You talk of the Quantum of Solace. But really isn’t that as ambitious as talking of destiny? All those things you said about growth, aren’t they also to be said about Solace? Even as you said “Quantum of Solace”, you attached with it the words “quest & destiny”.

Existentialism does not talk of “why are we here and what next in life”. It just talks of this very stationary universe that an individual tries to build around him. I believe that what Buddha saw was that one cannot constantly keep “wanting something”. And that if you are free from desires you finally see what life really is.

 Don’t ridicule me. Listen for a bit. Just because we have moved from “material desires” to “philosophical desires” doesn’t mean we have matured or seen life differently. It just means we have lived long enough for material desires to become meaningless. It simply shows AGE and not GRACE. So right now you have started wanting to discard certain ideas about “growth” and adapt certain other ideas about “solace” and stagnation. But that in no way implies your detachment. In simple words, you now want alchemy to be at the forefront of your desires, instead of … say food or academia.

So this ambition of yours is just yet another way of trying to grow. Grow out of something or grow into something. That is immaterial. But any sort of change is threaded to growth. Negative or positive. Call it by many new names. Call it destiny if you want. Call it solace if you may. But motion itself is growth. Time grows, ideas grow, speed grows, you grow, your mind grows, your desires grow, life grows. So until you have achieved the stagnation that Buddha did, you might never discover what it means to be outside of the circle of growth. I call it a circle because you do tend to feel like you’re back where you started. And also because going about it makes your head spin ;)