Tonight, I helped an old woman cross the road. And, though I did have that glow of 'doing your good deed for the day' for a while it quickly faded and I was overcome by a different kind of emotion.

Why do people have to grow old? Why can't they just decide to die someday without going through the misery of old age? Is old age life's way of handing back to us what we gave others during those moments of youthful indiscretion?

Every once in a while when I decide to do the grocery, I see old couples walking down the street carrying a few bags in their old wrinkled hands that contain the provisions that would get them through the week. Their children are probably sitting comfortably in their plush apartments somewhere in New York or Seattle oblivious to what their parents have to go through just to make sure that food gets to their table.

Is it what I will go through once I get... I can't even get myself to say the 'O-L-D' word. It is too scary a thought that someday it will be my turn. I will be that man who has to walk the road everyday to buy provisions because he is too weak to carry a month's supply. Someday it will be I who has to seek help to cross the road. Someday these legs would be too old to walk a mile and the hands too old to hold a cup of tea. Someday I would die. That would be deliverance. But, why do I have to go through suffering before that?

I do not believe in the doctrine of karma that says people only get what they deserve. What is the fault of an infant born into a family so poor and undernourished that his mother is not strong enough to be able to breast feed him? However bad his karma might have been does it really justify his not getting food, the basic right of every animal on this planet?

May be it is not. May be it is just God's way of pleasing his sick ego that he is all pervading and powerful. May be that is how he gets his kicks by playing with us. May be God himself is not so perfect after all. May be all the praises that we sing for him are overrated. May be he is the devil's alter ego. Who knows?

But, what I do know for certain is that a person so infinitely capable of compassion as he is made out to be is not capable of causing hurt and sufferring. So, may be I am right. He is, for all that he wants us to think, just a slob like one of us. Or may be he is us. All of us, manifested into one supreme being having great power and, along with it, great chances of abusing that power.

That hurts. We all know that evil is supposed to do, well, evil. But is God not supposed to thwart all its schemes? Is that not the very purpose of his being? Then why is he not fulfilling that purpose? Perhaps he is just a conniving heartless soul. If all people were happy and content, would he not be out of business? Then how does he differ from Microsoft?

The truth is, he doesn't.

Current Mood: Gloomy
Current Music: Nothing... just pent up frustration