I HAVE A RENDEZVOUZ WITH DEATH
Ayad Gharbawi
To the many needing comfort,
needing advice, needing passions sincere, to whom do they turn to?
To whom can they turn to?
The days unmask the increasing
emptiness between all of us, and the need for revolt is always there. The urge
to be solitary as a reflection of one’s disgust with the hollowness of human
beings, is always an attraction for some. The urge to speak one’s mind to all
people, to shatter the idiotic niceties and protocol that separates all of us
and represses our genuine needs and desires and ardent wishes in life, is
always an attraction for some.
The need to transcend the humdrum
of our lives daily is there, and yet we feel that somehow little can be
truthfully done. That is such a prevalent feeling – that as an individual I can
do very little to change my life, so one submits to apathy wearying.
The society of individuals
increasingly down cast and alone while at the same time people may increase
their social contacts – but, there are no positive results to be gained
therefrom, for the ‘human’ is crumbling as a sovereign entity into frightened fragments,
self-doubt and confusion.
Ask yourselves, what is the net
emotional result of all your socialising? For when the certain hour arrives and
you witness that accusatory feeling of ‘What have I done?’ your horrifying
reply will be that you have done nothing to fulfil your needs and desires and
passions.
The hour does ask you: ‘What do
you feel at the end of it all?’ and your emotions search vainly for meaning and
fulfilment, for in essence there never existed any meaning and fulfilment in
your lives in the first place.
Your life style, your socialising
has merely succeeded to varying degrees and extents in covering up your real
needs and desires.
Thus, in essence, you are merely
ignoring, avoiding and repressing your true feelings; the ‘successful’ day is
when you do not feel the urge to express your needs; in other words you have
successfully been able to distract yourself from your real self.
However, ones innate needs and
desires return to haunt us because they are our essence existentially.
Repression of one’s needs and desires and hopes results in disastrous
consequences of the self. We are not being true to our selves. We are masks, we
are afraid of ourselves because if we were to face ourselves, then that would
entail changing our lifestyles and our frame of mind.
The humans around you are not
‘real’.
They are not what they are
pretending to be.
The humans around you are living
in sorrow hidden by niceties and good manners and protocol and a million other
worthless distraction. The humans around you are losing their humanity, their
creativity, their needs and passions while they go about the routines of their
various lives predictable.
Man is dying in himself,
willingly wistfully to accept his/her resignation from life; echoes of Seeger’s
poem, ‘Rendezvous’ can hardly be ignored:
‘But I’ve a
rendezvous with Death
At midnight in
some flaming town
When spring trips
north again this year
And I to my
pledged word am true,
I shall not fail
that rendezvous.’
Ayad Gharbawi -
