A Poem On Nothingness (Closure) Poem by Souren Mondal
A Poem On Nothingness (Closure)
Wandering between
nothing and everything
confusion and peace
life and death
I choose love....
We are born without our will
we die mostly reluctantly
sometimes willfully
rarely with grace...
Nothing then is in our hands
What is true is only true for a moment
the time it takes for an insect
to be traped in a frog's leaping tongue...
Our thoughts are like like tadpoles
that never evolve
but remain floating in the water...
Who cares if there is a God?
Who cares if there isn't? ?
Everything is relative,
Mankind's heroic wars
are a shame for Mother Nature...
Your moral laws for women
are but a chain to imprison them in a black hole of misogyny
Innocent kids
with stumbling voices
are better than the leaders of the world...
*
*
***
*S *
*E E *
*******
For yourself and believe,
life is but meant to be lived
Ask questions but do not let yourself get
Entangled in them...
###########
In a womb
racing with a millions of sperm
only one wins to fertilise the egg
only at the right time
at the right moment....
We are born with precision from human bodies
bodies that evolved through millions of years
We have this body
and this mind
and this soul only....
We have this planet only..
We have this ONE life only...
Nothingness maybe something
that something may be nothing
But at the end we choose something
even if it is nothing
So
why choose nothing? ? ?
Souren Mondal
February 23,2016
The second poem in this 'series' is 'Four (and a half) poems on Nothing'.. The poem(s) are four fragments I wrote in just about ten minutes' time that attempted to deal in fragments the ontology of nothingness.. The problem with the concept of nothing is that it is a very paradoxical one..
How can we claim there exists such a thing as 'nothing'? ? What I mean, is that if 'nothing' exists, can it actually BE 'nothing'? ?
Jean-Paul Sartre raised the question of the ontological basic of nothingness in his extraordinary book 'Being and Nothingness'.. To be frank, I could not read the whole book, so to say, that my poem tries to response to Sartre's idea explained in the book would be inappropriate.. However, I did read his 'Nausea', 'The Age of Reason' and 'The Reprieve' (two of his three 'Roads to Freedom' books) , and his play 'Huis Clous' or 'No exit'...
Sartre's basic idea of existential crisis was that human beings remain unaware of two things -
a) They are born in a world where 'existence preceeds essence' - where, say, a Kantian 'categorical imperative' would be entirely non-existent.. Or where any pre-given or a priori ideas, moral values, and truth are nothing but a product of some kinds of cognitive bias or logical falacy.. Hence, human beings have no 'given' truth(s) to deal with..
This is in stark contrast with all the metaphysical ideas that have pretty much ruled ethics for ages.. Nietzsche called these ideas 'scanta simplicitia' or 'holy simplicity' in 'Beyond Good and Evil', and said all morality is based upon human beings' 'will to power' (consider Foucault's power's discourse)
Secondly, according to Sartre, an existential crisis becomes inevitable when humans realise that they might be born into 'nothingness', but they are entirely free to choose - that they have a 'free will' (not the religious free will but an absolute freedom) .. However, their choices cannot be without consequences and these consequences will impact one's life and they will be solely responsible for them..
This takes out fatalism, and all forms of philosophical discourses that claim that human beings have not entire control over their lives...
........
Finally, I think, as I have tried to express in the poem - We may never know about the nature of 'nothingness', but we can always try to live our lives 'happily' (so to say) by choosing love, and moralities that are not based upon a priory judgements, but more empirical perhaps purely phenomenological experiences...
Thank you for reading
Souren Mondal
23.02.2016
I found everything in this nothingness Souren...When we hit the rock bottom of life thats where we find the value of this precious life and we come to surface kicking and fighting the waters of life. Lets rejoice in present moment instead of trying the find the meaning of life. Lets flow with time keeping our heart and mind open. Beautifullllll poem. just loved it. esp tho sentence Your moral laws for women are but a chain to imprison them in a black hole of misogyny bitter truth of life.10+++
with someone we are nothing with other's we are everything with God we are his precious creation.. somehow we are special in our own way :)
To accept and to negate, in both the cases you need to have a conviction and that is something which leads to nothing from where it began and from beginning till end there is something. Life takes a swing between two extremes and they are Something and Nothing....You dealt with this subject in awesome way leaving the reader to choose between the two to be or Not to be...Thought provoking poem, Souren...Great write as usual.
Parts of this poem are magical. I liked the part about the insect and the part about the tadpoles very, very much.
Thank you Brian.. It is important for all of us that we stop being intimidated by nothingness, and give positive meanings to our lives..
In nothing there sometime somewhere something and sometimes somewhere everything....liked the poem....thank you for sharing :)
This finale on nothingness is like icing on the cake. Nothingness may be something, something may be nothing....you have nailed it. Im sure you will keep the concept of existentialism alive by your powerful writings. Though titled nothingness, it contains so many truths. And the ultimate question whether life is built on truths or lies will always haunt us. Deeply philosophical, with things we have wanted to say but couldn't find words for, this poem deserves a perfect 10.
Thank you Nosheen.. I have had many a sleepless nights with these thoughts and questions, and now, finally, after all these years, I have found some sort of relief from these thoughts - :)
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem
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4/26/2024 9:53:08 AM # 1.0.0.1119
Instead of racking our head on what will come after life or what happened before we came into this earth, let us focus on the moment right before us and our life we live here! As you have come to conclude, life's success depends on sensible choices we make and we can give meaning to life and wipe away the nothingness of life through love! You are too much of a philosopher and too much ahead of your age! A 10
Thank you Valsa ma'am.. My encounters with nothingness came as I lost faith in God gradually since I was 18 to the point when I turned 20.. In these two years I lived in a heavy turmoil without answers.. Then I read three books - Machiavelli's 'The Prince' that made me question the State and power, and morality of the establishment, followed by Macbeth whose 'Tommorrow, tommorrow, tommorrow' soliloquy made me think if life was indeed just 'sound and fury signifying nothing', and finally Neitzsche's 'The Birth of Tragedy' and the first book of 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra'... All these readings shaped my perception and my beliefs.. Shaken my faith in metaphysics a great deal.. And they were follwed by more Nietzsche and Sartre. Finally came 'Hamlet' and I was intellectually in a 'void'.. Combined with my personal experience of a kind of existential crisis in love, I lost my identity almost... I had faith in love, but lost that too... That send me into depression and loss of my academic career... But now, a lot more mature, and more well read, I feel I forgot an important figure amidst all of these - Francis Bacon - he said a very important thing - '...studies give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience.'.. And my experience through a journey where I have had many intellectual and emotional turmoils made me realise a simple 'truth', so to say, that we need not to think more than we can.. We can take what comes at our life with a smile if only we believe in ourselves, love each other, and maintain a simple life.. Hatred, violence, anger, and over-analysing.. These are harmful.. Just live by living a life of simplicity.. Love, be charitable, and try to find peace - emotional well being.. Yet check in these emotions by intellect, and vice-versa.. When wit and passion go hand in hand in right proportion, we live happily, at least content! !