The Sands Of Time

Nothing is more human than our desire to interpret our shared humanity by telling stories about ourselves to one another. Some of these are stories with characters in whom we see something of ourselves, stories which sometimes give shape and structure to our experiences by telling us who we are (if that question can be answered), where we have come from (if that is a meaningful notion), where we are headed towards (if at all anywhere), and what we should hope for (if for anything). This does not mean, of course, that we are always fully conscious of the stories that are being enacted in and through our existence (for example, many Westerners may have only a vague notion of precisely what 'capitalism' is, many Hindus but a faint idea of what 'Hinduism' refers to, and so on); and sometimes, given the fact that we stand at the moving intersection of a number of stories, it may not be possible to exhaustively specify the stories that we find ourselves criss-crossed by (for example, a person could accept certain elements from Marxism, be a practising Christian who goes for Yoga sessions over the weekend). We could say that we are mobile nodes in a gigantic network of stories, and this places us in an ambivalent position with respect to the other nodes. Nothing is more facile than to claim one's love for general Humanity, and nothing more difficult than to eradicate one's hatred for specific human beings, especially the ones who are closer to us.