Abah was flipping through the news channels the other day, and after a number of clicks we began to see an emerging pattern.
“Tak habis-habis depressing news je. Don’t they have anything else to show?” he grumbled.
He had just come home late from work, exhausted and I suppose in need of hearing cheerful things. I tried placing things in a better light.
“Tapi Abah, isn’t it a sort of a good thing that only depressing news reaches the mass media? It means positive things happen on a daily basis, too many to count and so impossible to broadcast them all, while depressing news are like the exception to that general rule? It’d be sad if good things were news; that would mean there’s such a scarcity of them that to have them even happen gives a cause to celebrate.”
Of course, what I said exactly wasn’t as articulately put as the above sentence, but that was the gist of it. He wasn’t paying much attention though, probably too worn out from the day’s load and there’s a strong possibility that I may have been rambling incoherently. You can’t blame me, my dad makes me nervous.
Anyway.
In some ways, I can understand his frustration. When you come home late after a long day at work, burdened with responsibilities that you choose to take upon yourself so that the bills get paid, there’s a roof over your family’s head, clothes on their back, food on the table and education for the children…sometimes you need a little break from the routine you go through day after day, because too much routine can kill the soul. The last thing you’d want to do is to switch on the telly only to be confronted with human tragedy, one after the other. It feels like there’s something terribly, terribly wrong with the world, that we’re living within a flawed grand design. Don’t you feel that weight pressing on you too? If we didn’t have faith, we might as well call it a day. At least we know there’s a point to all this.
Whenever I feel an overwhelming sense of despair wash over me due to the state of mankind and the slow demise of humanity…I watch Matt Harding dance:
…and for a moment, it makes me feel better. It makes me feel like things might be as bad as we make it out to be, but the situation isn’t completely devoid of hope. Hope - the one good thing from Pandora’s Box.
For a moment, Matt Harding makes me believe that we aren’t as divided as we think we are, that we share a human connection despite our differences, and it is that human connection that keeps us moving forward in all our diversity.
The song in this video uses a poem by Rabindranath Tagore, one of my favourite reads. It translates to:
Stream of Life
The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day
runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures.
It is the same life that shoots in joy through the dust of the earth
in numberless blades of grass
and breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers.
It is the same life that is rocked in the ocean-cradle of birth
and of death, in ebb and in flow.
I feel my limbs are made glorious by the touch of this world of life.
And my pride is from the life-throb of ages dancing in my blood this moment.
—
So.
You and you and you and you.
Dance with me?
Enough said here.
