Struggling is the Essential Feature of Life
Posted on December 26, 2007 | Filed Under Inspirational
Mystery envelops the origin of life on earth. Science has done much to unravel the mysteries of nature, but the grand riddle of life still remains unsolved. But if the origin of life is shrouded in darkness, not so is its character. Its essential feature is struggle. If there is any common element among all forms of life, high and low, it is this continuous struggle. Pain and suffering born of this struggle permeate life, and rightly as Francis
Thomson said,
“We are born in other’s pain and perish in our own”
Perhaps this bitterness, this struggle is an echo of God’s judgment on the erring man that he is to earn his bread with the sweat of his face. But the curse has alighted not only on man but on the entire animate and inanimate creation. The slender streamlet struggle with thousand impediments on its forward course. The planets roll round fighting with innumerable attractions and the mountain erects its stony height by piercing the hard crust.
What unseen fight goes on behind human eyes between a tiny seed and the hard soil which it is to pierce? When the sapling comes out there begins another phase of the struggle, with the fury of the elements, the ravages of animals and the thoughtlessness of man. The same cruel struggle goes on in the animal world, and so fierce it is there that some times a whole species become extinct.
The insects that crawl on the ground, the bees that build the hive, the birds that chirp, has each their woeful tale of struggle to tell, if there are men to listen. So struggle goes on not only on this earth, but in the sky above and in the ocean below. This world is a grand arena where fights go on without end.
In the life of man is seen the same struggle from the cradle to the grave. Even a fetus in the mother’s womb wages war by sucking the life blood of the mother. The cry of the new born baby announces the coming fight of life. The child’s fretting, crying, crawling and stumbling are but maneuvers in a long campaign. When it grows to a man there begins another phase of its fight.
Man has diverse enemies to struggle with. First begins his lifelong struggle with the forces of nature. They are either favorable or unfavorable. Man must be wise and strong enough to fight with the adverse influences and turn the benign aspects of nature to his use. Food and poison are held before man, it is for him to choose the one and reject the other. When we speak of life as a tale of the survival of the fittest, we but lay our stress on this aspect, on man’s continual struggle with natural environments.
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