The Trail


 We all have seen it. From a hill or just from some distance. A line cutting through the foliage, scratching the ground, snaking, meandering across the landscape. Starting from the far side of the creek or from the bottom of the rocky hill, cutting across the jungle floor to eventually vanish into the thicket of trees up yonder. Zigzagging like a drunken sailor. A mile long reptile hugging the forest floor. A Trail.


It is pretty too. It must mean something, mustn’t it? It must have a Purpose. A path designed to take one from point A to point B? From here to there or perhaps bring’em from there to here? Both seem plausible enough, for a Purpose. Don’t they?


Wait, but who designed the Trail? Who, what, when carved it onto Earth’s chest? It seems like it may have existed for ever. Like life itself!


Wait, who, what, when designed Life?


Therein may lie our foible. The path may exist afterall, not to take people from here to there. It may exist because people went from here to there. It was not the cause for people to travel. It was a result of people travelling. Like life may be, a result of people living, and not the other way around. 


How does it matter though. Is it not just play of words? Some bone headed contemplation about nothing? May be it is.


Or perhaps, our minds are conditioned to assign purpose to everything. A tree, a bee, a jaguar.. all have a purpose, in our minds. Assigned duties in the ecosystem that they are a part of. Even our lives have been assigned a purpose. A purpose to please some God, to procreate or to understand truth and become one with it. So many potential purposes. 


But alas, a Jaguar may just exist because other Jaguars have existed and for no other reason. And when it lives it does it’s thing. May be life itself is like that. It just exists because it has and for no other reason. And just like the trail in the woods, the one who walks gets to be the one to give it a purpose, temporarily. And the next passer by gives the trail a different purpose altogether, based on his needs. Going, coming, staying put.. the Trail and Life may not have an agenda of their own or meaning at all. Trail is because people have walked. Life is, because people have lived. That’s all there may be to it. 


Else how does one explain that 99 percent species that have ever lived, are extinct. What was their purpose that suddenly got extinguished?


Our’s may too, some day, extinguish. Indeed ours will too some day. Won’t it? 


If it ever existed, that is. 

Comments

  1. AnonymousJuly 13, 2024 at 4:19 AM

    The subject gives the object it's purpose. But what purpose does the subject have? Who defines it? Would love your thoughts on it beyond just dlip in time and space, else it leave you with a melancholy feeling.

    Thank you for sharing, Atul!

    ReplyDelete

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