Samir Shukla
By Samir Shukla
The other day I was walking around a large grassy area on our farm and noticed a patch of dirt in the green, a nest made by ants. The red ants had dug up an area of about a square foot and turned the dirt inside out into a small mound. There were a few ants roaming around on top.
I stomped my foot just on the perimeter, without disturbing the mound, and hundreds of angry ants spilled out, seeking the offender, the one who disturbed their world. Their little mound was perfectly crafted for their short lives, and the hyperactivity of these busy miniature critters settled down after a few minutes and they retreated into the ground.
Starlings. Thousands of them. A flock of those noisy little birds swarmed over barren trees which bordered that ant mound, a few days later. They looked like a swirl of smoke weaving about and landing on trees. Their sky dances and cacophony faded in the distance as they flew off to another grove of trees and then again further down the road.
Humans often form into bunches of the alike – single-minded ants, swirling swarms of starlings, partisan voters. We can work together to achieve a common goal. Other times we bunch up, like voters, where the results of an election angers half the country and makes the other half happy. If it goes the other way, the anger and joy would be reversed.
Millions of Americans voted in the recent national election, and then settled back into their mounds, cocoons and flocks, either bruised and battered or smug and satiated.
A million stories and happenings infuse our little world every hour, day, week, month, year. It’s a mind-boggling feast of ongoings amongst everything. At the same time, all these activities and buzzings are laughed aside by the grind of time. Its precise tick tock into the next moment, the immediate future, cares not whether you work through the day or sleep through it. If you are having a happy day or a sad one. The tick, tock, simply, doesn’t, care.
The churn of human time is sometimes best understood in batches. Outside of turning 18 or 21, those markers of youth notching adulthood, the multiples of five give a sense of specificity, maybe like chapters of a life book. These numbers… 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 50…60…, are well-cut and rounded, for celebration, for reflection, maybe even as bookmarks for what has passed or teasers of what may be lurking ahead, down the road.
The incoming year 2025 is another multiple of five. The number is a signpost saying we are now a quarter of the way into this century. I’ve been thinking about all the changes we have brought unto ourselves in just the last 25 years. Human ingenuity is accelerating these technological advancements at unfathomable speeds.
We are building stuff with invisible code without fully understanding its possible effects. Even the atom bombs were duly tested before they were used with such devastating effect. Unhuman intelligence is creeping into every machine, doodad, software and device. We are real-time guinea pigs in this self-inflicted endeavor.
There is no time for testing, lest someone else beats the clock with a competitive advancement. This stuff brings promise and unease. There are lots of dark, unexplored roads in this young and fast-moving century. They can be managed with the light of reasoned minds or bungled with ill-fitted blinders. Everything can be made manageable if embarked upon with care. One step at a time.
An impulsive move, moments of hesitation, a slow stroll or a fast sprint, getting toes wet or making deep dives, these possibilities of life will keep ticking along, while the only ointment against the demons of life – cynicism, fear, narcissism, anger, anxiety, resentment – is the achievement of personal contentment. This elusive bit of mind patching only comes through the humbling passage of time, stitched with experience, reflection, self-learning, and self-growth.
This potential contentment is always in one’s grasp, just waiting to be warmed and brought into daily use. Until the final long sleep, there is no other way around or out of life’s twists and turns except with focused and confident steps taken on the roads ahead.
We are sometimes singularly minded like the ants building and protecting their mound.
We are sometimes like starlings gleefully flying about in swarms, making sky art.
We are like our opposites more than we are unlike.
We are the makers and destroyers of our own destinies.
What is in our hands is to make the tick and tock of time into an individually managed stroll while taking in the awesomeness of life, its incessant movements, its abstractions and concreteness, and just let the roads grind under our feet.
Happy Quarter Century and welcome 2025.
Samir Shukla is the Editor of Saathee Magazine.
Contact: [email protected]
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