Let there be light?

"Dilon mein tum apni betaabiyan leke chal rahe ho, toh zinda ho tum." - Javed Akhtar's lyrics in Zindagi Naa Milegi Dobara

“You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star.” - Neitzsche's quote in the opening line of The Dirty Picture

The concept of Pain (dard) as a prerequisite for good music as explored in the movie Rockstar.

It's too much of a coincidence that three of the recent movies that I saw speak about the same thing. To add to that a recent book I am reading as part of coursework talks about the Paradox of Courage. It states that you are courageous only when you know there is ambiguity. Only when things are uncertain, do you take leaps of courage. If you are too accustomed to the comfort zone, mediocrity settles in. The state of happiness is detrimental. Happiness is overwhelming. It pulls you down. You resist change. You play it safe because you don't want to be hurt.

But this is not to say that grief is always good. Grief that does not make you strive to eliminate itself is equally detrimental. Grief or discomfort that makes you give up is unacceptable. Because giving up is a compromise. It is settling into the comforts of discomfort. What an irony!

Courtesy: carlosordaz

The answer lies in the pursuit of happiness. The process makes life worthy of living. It is a journey; an end in itself. It has both happy and sad moments. One does not exist without the other. Most innovations occur in the darkest of hours. Resourcefulness has its meaning only when there is constraint. Progress happens only after impedance. You succeed only after you have failed. And, it is the fear of failure that makes success so pleasurable. It is the experience of discomfort that makes you yearn for comfort. Staying into any one state for long is being vegetative, comatose, void of life - dead.


So, let there be light. And, not.