It's A Finite Life. Mustn't Better Sense Prevail?

Have we learnt a lesson from the pandemic? Have we made corrections? The answer is really out there for all of us to see

- Harish Bijoor

This has always made me wonder: Life is just so finite, yet we take ourselves, our views, our opinions, our high grounds and so much else, all so seriously. This sure is a modern-day disease.

Or is it? Is this the very proudly branded "animal spirit” of achievement and distinction that we humans celebrate? When you clearly know you have only 100 metres to sprint, you give it your best. And everyone wants to better the best. And is this animal spirit, that one spark that motivates all of us to run and do better than the best?

Any thought, and indeed any argument, can be spun out in every direction. As can this. Let me however add a contemporary zing to this rather old question and even older debate. Let's look at what's happening around us and decide whether things have changed so much that we need to ask this question again. Are we taking ourselves a bit too seriously? And must we not?

The pandemic, which now threatens to fan out into a fourth wave sooner than later and engulf every one of us who has not had a taste of the virus as yet, has knocked us on the knuckles. But has it taught us a lesson as yet?