Philosophy
Mood:  quizzical
Topic: Not sourfaced, no requiem
Philosophy can do with being less sombre and sour-faced. Or sounding like a requiem. Serious pursuits need not be carried out in a grave manner. One can avoid being considered frivolous or flippant by means other than solemnity or pomposity. And it is mere poppycock that needs the subterfuge of pedagogy or pontificality. By appearing intense, dedicated, obsessed or harrassed one can succeed in conveying honesty of purpose. But to more avail would be an intensity that is not an obsession, a dedication which is unharrassed, a genius that is not a snob, a honesty that is not doctrinaire, a purposefulness that is neither a crusade nor a diktat.
Of greater import is the joy de vivre of describing the bubling ecstasy of a baby's smile or the twinkle of mischief in a toddler's eyes than all the reams that can be written in aesthetics. Read Will Durant's autobiography, Transition. Especially his final chapter. Or note the way in which most seeking or creative souls come into their deliverence.
Ideology, power, money, fame, all become redundant.
Non-Issues become the supreme Issues.



Ajai
? Oct 1989


(Excerpted from On Non-Issues , New Quest, March-April 1991,p89-97, quote on p97. Co-author: Shakuntala. Reproduced with her permission.)