Today as I was watching the movie “An unfinished life” on HBO starring Robert Redford, Jennifer Lopez and Morgan Freeman, I was mesmerized.
Yesterday, an episode had saddened me. And somehow subconsciously, I linked the movie to the incident of the young faculty whose death was yet another result of an increasing rate of crime in the city. The young man, who just got married last year and was supposed to leave for Australia to pursue a PhD degree in February, instead, had to let go of an unfinished life!
So, I paused and wondered if there was something missing from my life. Of course there is something missing, I would like to get married and so on. There is something always missing from all our lives. Oprah says, “That’s the nature of life, that there is always something missing from it. It’s not a problem”, she says, “The reverse would be a problem, the life with nothing missing in it. The life without options, without hope, without pain, the unfinished and incomplete life is the only life”. She says “People who do not live in Paris do not live in Fiji. People who run successful businesses are unable to compose folk songs. Keep chasing the void and you loose the moment. So her theory is that there is nothing missing right now, there is everything, air and water and however your body feels and the people who love you and the people who don’t and the people who have did and the and the music and the disease and the job and the idea and the challenge and the dinner and your shoes -- there are so many things right now that there is no room for a void. There is nothing missing”.
She continues by saying that “Maybe it's the metaphor of consumerism eating our lives. Maybe it's the constant drumbeat of information from all sides with one common message: Something is missing. Government control is missing, or freedom is missing, or high colonics or adequate fiber or really great tires or true fulfillment or smart children or good drugs or safe meat or the secrets of the Pyramids or better beer or better hair or better boyfriends/girlfriends/friends”.
That’s what Oprah thinks. I think, everyone has something to search for, look forward to, and complete life with. So that when we look back, we can smile and be happy for doing all that we ever wanted to do and have everything that we ever wished for. Everyone has that right to live life to the fullest. And the truncation of such a life so abruptly is a terribly sad thing.
