Short essay on is life a tragedy or comedy

Generalisations about life are almost always misleading for the simple reason that life means different things to different people, and every man’s response to its call is determined by his own experience and temperament.

According to one writer, human life everywhere is in a state in which much is to be endured and little enjoyed. Another writer finds life an exhilarating experience, a thrilling adventure, a source of infinite joy. A man who has suffered few mishaps in life, whose upbringing has been in healthy surroundings, who is fortunate in love and friendship, who has identified himself with some public cause or who cultivates a wide range of interests is invariably happy.

On the other hand, bitter experience of life; deaths in the family and among friends, economic insecurity, frustration in love, failure to achieve anything substantial in life, or excessive and morbid absorption in self induce pessimism.

Philosophers, disgusted with the state of public affairs or with the ways of providence or nature, are always undergoing acute mental anguish, which drives them at times to insanity or suicide. Others, despite the spectacle of human folly or Divine indifference towards human affairs, can find a positive meaning in life and can participate in its varied activities with real zest.

Some people are driven into despair by a minor disturbance in their daily routine, by petty vexations, by slight unpleasantness. Some can face even dire calamities with equanimity, never allowing the smile on their face to disappear even for a moment.

Happiness or unhappiness is, therefore, not a feature of life in any absolute sense. With some people, a melancholic attitude is merely a pose. They luxuriate in unhappiness. Melancholy is viewed by some people as a sign of intellectual sophistication, and happiness is regarded as a sign of mental immaturity.

Some persons are haunted by the fear of death, sickness and old age, and they bemoan the transient nature of beauty, youth and joy, while others are gracefully reconciled to whatever life brings them. Such variations are inevitable. We can neither create conditions of permanent bliss, nor make everyone happy.

The modern age is often spoken of as the age of anxiety. There is no warrant for the assumption that contemporary social conditions make for greater unhappiness. Most of us have a nostalgic feeling for the past. Life in rural surroundings is often regarded as much healthier and happier than in towns. Those who hold this view forget the absence of civic amenities in villages, the painful toil of the tillers of the soil, their drab and monotonous existence and the natural calamities to which they are subject.

Life can be cheerful or boring anywhere. The primary condition of a happy life is that there should be universal peace and freedom and that everyone should at least be assured of the basic conditions of civilised life.

Material insecurity is most demoralising. Unemployment destroys individual dignity, impairs a man’s self-confidence, creates a feeling of profound frustration and disillusionment in him, makes him an enemy of society, wrecks his home or prospects of happy married life and gives him the feeling that he is a failure, a misfit, an unwanted thing. It drives him, at times, into crime, insanity or suicide.

Society must devise an economic system which ensures full employment, fair wages and decent conditions of living and work. It must mitigate the sufferings caused by natural calamities. It must provide equality of opportunity so that none harbors any sense of injustice.

Men become unhappy if they feel that their work does not bring out the best within them, and does not fully engage their talents, or if their work is of so exhausting a nature that it renders them unfit for the full enjoyment of leisure.

Wealth provides no assurance of happiness in the absence of work. Even the richest man who can keep himself busy with all kinds of attractions and excitements feels thoroughly bored if he cannot have a settled occupation of an agreeable nature. Nobody can be happy if his country is driven by factions, and threatened with political instability.

There have always been wars in the history of the human race and men have always grievously suffered in consequence of human brutalities, but never before was the threat to the survival of mankind involved in war so grave. Human happiness is bound up with universal peace and freedom.

Nothing causes so much discontent as the feeling that a man is not the architect of his own fate, that he cannot make his own decisions and that he is driven about against his will to preserve and promote the interests of a dominant party. Men under totalitarian regimes can never experience the joy that the free exercise of faculties provides.

We invite unhappiness by our bad habits and wrong ethical standards. Some people are suspicious by nature. They suffer from a persecution mania. They attribute their failures and disappointments not to their own limitations, but to the machinations of their enemies. If their work does not receive adequate recognition, they suspect that there is a conspiracy somewhere to deprive them of their legitimate rights. Their grievances, however slight, turn them into cynics and atheists.

Apprehensive of dangers which are either highly exaggerated or purely imaginary, they lose their sense of proportion and become mental wrecks. Men of envious disposition are always miserable. Envy, hatred and malice are common to most people, both men and women. People are more easily stirred by feelings of hatred than by feelings of love.

Fanatics, demagogues and dictators can easily secure a following by exploiting the passions of the masses against some nation, race or religion. A happy person always loves his fellow beings, rejoices in their good fortune and always wishes them well.

A great deal can be done to relieve misery and mitigate suffering and unhappiness if children are brought up in a congenial atmosphere at home, in schools and in society.

Our aim should be to produce citizens who can join with their fellow men to create a happy race, to make this planet a decent place to live in and to establish homes where wedded love and parental affection, combined with judicious care, discipline and training in co-operation give children the right start in life.

Those who cannot co-operate with others for common benefit, who isolate themselves from their fellow- men, and cut themselves off from the mainstream of life, who are self centered, absorbed in themselves, interested more in taking from society than in giving it are always wretched.

Life is what we make of it. When Jecques in Shakespeare’s play mocks at innocent childhood, romantic love, courage and old age, he is not a philosopher or a wise man, but a cheap cynic who has made a mess of his own life and is merely generalising from his own limited experience.

Macbeth described life as a tale told by an idiot, all sound and fury, signifying nothing because, having lost everything, he was in deep despair. Life holds out infinite possibilities of happiness. Only this happiness has to be worked for.

How can we be happy? First and foremost, we must take up work which is congenial to us, which brings about the best within us, which adds in some way to the enrichment of life. Income, of course, is an important consideration, in the choice of a career but it should not be the only consideration because work is also a means of self-realisation.

Next in importance to occupation is marriage. Married life would be a success if both partners take deep interest in each other and if there is perfect equality between them. Where one partner is dominant and the other subservient, perfect happiness is out of the question. There must be full co-operation between them for their own benefit, for the benefit of their off springs and for the benefit of society at large.

Another factor contributing to human happiness is the ability to use leisure. Some people are bored to death when they have no professional work to keep them busy. This is a symptom of deficiency somewhere, of want of zest in life. Those who have multifarious interests, who make lots of friends and earnestly strive to make them happy, who believe in living at least as much for others as for themselves are always happy.

The Indian ethical system provides the real basis on which a life of lasting happiness can be built—the ethics of the disinterested performance of duty. There is no failure in a life of detachment, no disappointment over non-recognition of merit.

The life of detachment is not the life of a recluse meditating over the mysteries of the universe, but of a man active in the affairs of the world, doing his duty, serene in his mind, in full control of his senses, conscious of the fact that he owes allegiance to humanity whose welfare is his religious duty. It is immaterial to him if the world is ungrateful to him, if he is not rewarded according to his merits, if he is misunderstood. He is happy in that he has not failed in the performance of his duties.

Death holds no terror for him. He is not a prey to any fears. A serene mind is a happy mind. Happiness does not come to a cheap hedonist who seeks it in food, sex, drink and drugs, but to a man who has consciously done his work, which has injured nobody, done nobody any injustice.

We cannot take happiness for granted. We have to strive for it. Nobody is born melancholy and nobody inherits a cheerful disposition. Happiness depends upon our social system and upon us.

Some people are, of course, more fortunate than others in the sense that the circumstances of their lives are less exacting and involve less tension or conflict, but affluence and power are not essential to happiness. In the case of some people it appears as if a malignant fate is bent upon blasting their lives.

Only an incorrigible pessimist can say that such persons constitute a majority. Such unfortunate persons represent isolated or exceptional cases. For a great majority of people, happiness is well within their reach. What is needed is the determination to achieve it.