THE LAST RITES
Everybody dies…EVERYBODY!!!
This is the only undisputed truth of life.
Yet we all go on living our life throwing caution to the wind and in denial of this simple reality. Every day death is one day closer to us and yet we live as if we shall live forever.
Nothing brings this fact more particularly in focus than attending a funeral. There is nothing more humbling than witnessing the last rites of someone you have known. Apart from the inevitable and unanswerable philosophical questions which arise in one’s mind regarding the purpose of life and what lies beyond, there are two other interlinked things that such an event always draws into focus.
One is the triviality of grudges we carry in life, and second is the hypocrisy of human beings in attending the last rites of people they have begrudged.
Show me someone who says they have never in their life begrudged someone and I shall show you a liar. The fact is that all of us, have at some point or the other, begrudged someone or the other in our lives…for something they said, for something they did, for something they didn’t say, for something they didn’t do. We typically allow such grudges to cause an estrangement with the people that we hold the grudges against and strain the relationships we share with them.
The estrangement may end…either with the passage of time, or with the actions or decisions of persons involved to look beyond the subject matter of the grudge. However, in some cases the estrangement does not end before the death of one of the protagonists involved. And then we show up for the last rites of the person we have begrudged. With a grim face and remorseful eyes.
The question then arises, why do we go to the funeral of someone who we have begrudged while they were alive?
If the grudge was significant enough for us to have estranged our relationship with such person while they were alive then our showing up for their funeral is an act of sheer hypocrisy motivated with the selfish objective of being ‘socially correct’ and participating in the last rites as is expected of us.
And if, on the other hand, upon the demise of such person, we realize that the grudge was trivial and we regret having lost valuable time that could have been spent nurturing the relationship with such person, then that’s even worse!!!
Most of the time, I can bet, the case is the latter. Most of the grudges we all hold against the people in our lives are trivial enough to not matter an iota in the larger scheme of things. Yet we allow them to pervade our relationships with such persons and affect the same. We choose not to look beyond the issues we have and bring the baggage of the grudges to bear on the relationships. The relationships deteriorate and time passes. Even if the relationship mends during the lifetime of both the persons involved, we have still lost valuable time and inflicted damage which could have been avoided. And in case the relationship does not mend before the demise of either of the persons involved, we then end up filled with tremendous regret when the triviality of the issues and the irreversibility of the loss dawns on us.
So the simple question we have to ask ourselves is this…is the grudge we hold against someone borne out of issues significant enough for us to foresake the relationship today even at the cost of not being able to mend it before such person dies? If the answer is yes, then we should at least have the strength to avoid being a hypocrite and desist from participating in the last rites of such a person when they die. And if the answer is no, then we should garner the maturity and insight to look beyond the trivial issues in our mind and without putting off to tomorrow (for there may not be a tomorrow) immediately take steps to nurture the relationship so long as we have the time and opportunity to do so.
Alas, God played a cruel joke when he created us humans. For he gave us the illusion of superiority to his other creations, yet he made us the most petty and ignorant of them all. We all know the triviality of that which we engage in, especially when we are standing amidst the funeral gathering. Yet we forget it soon after we leave the funeral grounds and go back to the rigmarole of our despicable everyday routine where we harbour grudges against people in our lives and trade in precious moments we have left to spend with them for estrangement and strain. But we do always remember to show up for their last rites, because being the hypocrites we are, we must do our duties for the departed even though we didn’t give a shit about them while they were alive!!!