Mayfly Philosophy

One humid night outside my front door, I was sitting in boredom waiting for the sun to go down so I could maybe catch the twilight dusk. The sky turned dark pretty fast that day and it wasn't nearly as impressive as the day before. Flies started buzzing all around and to my surprise, were suddenly gone.

In intrigue, I looked up. Turned out, the light above the door frame had been turned on. Like a pilgrimage, little bugs from all around flew right up to it and made tapping sounds at the glass casing. At first I felt pitiful. For these tiny beings could only have so much energy and were wasting it for no reason.

Almost like they wanted to break into the bulb and touch the filament, they battered their heads on the glass repeatedly. Fluttering their little wings with all their might. It was indeed pitiful to watch. Still is, whenever I see them. Near bulbs, tube lights, signboards or open fires.

“How could one of nature’s creations be so flawed?” I thought. Moreover, it wasn’t like mankind’s musings had not ruined the life of other beings till then. The industrial revolution was literally able to change the colour of moths in the U.K.

Pollution back then killed off most lichen and changed the colour of the moth’s habitat and so eventually, the bright ones died out to predators.

“How then do these silly and pointless bugs persist?” I thought.

They never seem satisfied even after reaching the brightest point in the darkness all around the area. What must be so appealing inside the bulb that they don’t stop and rest on the glass casing. Must be warm and nice, but no.

You could put it scientifically, that these bugs are oriented by warmth and light. But I refuse to believe that they don’t understand to some primitive extent, that flame will burn them. Yet they possess such vigour, to dig deeper and go further. To touch the sun.

Art by Angela Bartlett.

Now when I think of it, the philosophical abstractions and parallels that can be drawn are boundless. Ever since we are born we obsess over ‘purpose’.

What is the ‘purpose’ of these creatures of the night? Flesh and a soul, we are no different than a bug fluttering about in the wind.

Here’s the grand conclusion I’ve come up with: However hard we try, our destiny and purpose has already been decided. As time passes, the branches of unknown possibilities are woven into a definite past. Our part in the grand scheme of things has already been solidified and it is simply our duty to walk down it. Just as the bugs live to pollinate and fall to serve as food for another, our purpose may be bigger than theirs. But to reach out to the stars and our likeness of a bulb is a waste of time and energy. We are bound by the ways of this universe and can do nothing but walk down our pre-written path.

Now, if you raised your eyebrows at anything I’d written till now, congratulations, you’re a free thinker. Because everything I wrote in the previous paragraph is bull shit.

You may have come across that argument from others before and while some accept it and love to cower in the comfort of pre-written destiny, I deplore that system of thought.

This is not to say that I am ignorant of life’s way. Everything does happen for a reason. The logic of the uncertain present being some future’s known past, still holds solid. What I despise is the helplessness and restraint induced by this philosophy and have now understood it better.

Just as it is a gnat’s purpose to dance in the sun, it is ours to look for our purpose. Submission to the future is not what carves it but the active defiance of seeking comfort in its invariability.

In the book ‘Notes from Underground’, Dostoevsky says, “Man likes the ‘process of attaining’, but not the final product. Consequently, mathematical certainty is intolerable. And, even though two times two makes four is good logic, two times two is five, is sometimes a very charming thing too.”

Robert Frost’s purpose was not simply to travel down the road not taken. It was a mere choice which shaped him. The word cannot be used as a synonym of destiny, because destiny is attainable. Invariably. Purpose is not.

The word is dangerously misinterpreted to be a static one. As something one discovers and safely stows away in their coat pockets for life, abiding by and treasuring it.

I believe that if the so-called ‘dead’ universe can exist for no reason with all its complexity and fiery, explosive passion.. as living beings maybe it's futile to look for a reason in our objective.

Now comes my actual take on this. I believe ‘To look for our purpose’ is our purpose. To flutter about in the sun and try to find something that cannot be found. I believe it’s only the people who know that their calling can never be reached, the people who never rest on the glass coverings of the metaphoric bulbs in their lives, who do not claim that ‘they have found their purpose’. Perhaps it’s only them who have truly found it. ‘Purpose’

My purpose, I hope.. is unattainable till I breathe my last. (Quote me on this please.)

“If you want to be a grocer, or a general, or a politician, or a judge, you will invariably become it; that is your punishment. If you never know what you want to be, if you live what some might call the dynamic life but what I will call the artistic life, if each day you are unsure of who you are and what you know you will never become anything, and that is your reward.”

- Oscar Wilde