life is an adventure perilous and joy
“Joy and woe are woven fine
A texture for the theme divine”
These lines of the great English mystic poet William Blake would serve as an appropriate beginning of the article. Life is indeed an adventure. Adventure tacitly assumes the risk of the unknown, and joy resides in surmounting it. The great freedom fighters, mountaineers or voyages and expeditions have all embarked on their adventurous journey lured by a strange and uncanny feeling of joy, what though it entailed perils and fear of death at every step.
Take the case of the legendary Jim Corbett whom the man eaters lured into traps. His books narrate the experience in a language that would make you start on your bed and jump at the drop of a lizard from the ceiling of your peaceful room. At least so it did me, once while I was browsing through the pages of ‘’the man-eating Leopard of Rudraprayag’’. He suffered, or to be more correct, he exulted in his perilous calling because it was enjoyable. Thus he enriched jungle literature with his first hand experience. The great Joseph Conrad loved the perilous seas and his ‘’the mirror of the sea’’. Treat us to a feast the fearful experiences of the sea.
Life that is simply cheerful, bereft of risks, fears or adventures, is blasé and cloying. It makes a man impotent, unattractive and dull as a chair-borne politician, a spoon-fed boy or a pampered adult. These are jellyfish creature, for friction alone lends a meaning to life.
A poser in this context: did the stalwart of Bengali fiction Sarat Chandra Chatterjee dare nature’s wrath as in his famous sea-experience, or the perilous inroads into the unsafe habitats heavily infected with fatal diseases like the cholera or small-pox, only to cull up food for his great works? Or, they were labours or journeys prompted by love and compassion. He was not impelled by a sense of duty, but by a sensation to know, to fight and surmount. Subhas Chandra Bose could have purchased an unruffled, peaceful life, but at what cost? – At the cost of his faith in a life of struggle. To establish that faith he burnt his boat at home and embarked on a storm-ridden course, which we all know.
Instances! Their number is legion’, as the proverb goes. Delight that is born of adventure racks not its hazards. It is almost an axiom that danger looks dangerous only till it is dared, for the fear of the unknown can be reduced only knowing it. The great joy lies in achievement and achievement presupposes struggle.
Many a times in life I have tested the real implication of the phrase, ‘there is nothing like successes. At the earlier stage it struck me as silly and idiotic. I felt it states the obvious that everyone know. But when failures crossed my path and I was obliged to face them, I learnt the truth. I realized that real success is self-earned, not a gift of god or anybody, and it is the harbinger to a new kind of joy and sensation.
Like it on Facebook, Tweet it or share this article on other bookmarking websites.