Agony & Ecstasy





Is PAIN of body & soul the driving force behind art of the highest kind? Be it in any form - mezmerizing music, wonderful and touching writings, sweeping stupendous paintings and realistic sculpture that seems to burst out of its frozen medium. Is the difference between good and bad art, the difference between pain and happiness? Is it actually the story of agony and ecstacy?

It is said that for a spiritual awakening one must go through trials of mind and body, for they are the chisels of our character, and make us who we are. Is then, life a smouldering pit of fire that keeps burning at all times - to live is to experience and encounter pain, challenges, trials and problems. To expect life to unfold easily and without any set-backs is being naive and expecting an impossibility and as I feel an unecessary requirement for happiness and pleasure, for it is in pain that our true self emerges and we tend to grow as a person from within, we transform into another person just like a catterpillar morphozing into a butterfly.

The hindi movie Rockstar got me thinking in a funny way, that it is really the depth of pain, the forced introspection that comes when things tend to go wrong in our lives, the pauses, the stops, the jerks that we must go through when something big and usually painful hits us and forces us to look closely at who we actually are? what are the things that make us into the us that we become? what are the external circumstances that contribute to our miseries per say and what are our own contributions to the way life treats us.

It is through the glasses of pain, of depression, of loneliness, of alienation, of separation that we develop characteristics that may make us into creative beings, that help us appreciate and create art, that makes us see the good amonst the bad in this world.

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