Life goes on..

I have heard of several stories about women being mistreated by men in several cultures across the globe, I have also seen few women harassed by men and society and also seen women who have a submissive attitude in the society. I have also seen women who prefer to be dominated by men and society. True, this thought is subjective.
I used to always think when will humankind see a peaceful free society across the globe with both men and women living harmoniously in equality?

Then yesterday, I happen to see a wild life program which showed how male animals dominates the females in order to make sure that, only their genes are passed on to the next generation. There will be barbaric fights between two males in order to own entire group of females. Species like Lions, even go to an extent where certain males even kill other male’s offspring’s to make sure the competitor’s genes are finished off. Some chimps’ males even try to rape his sister in order to pass his gene. They do not even bother about incestuous relations.

This program on television indeed made me feel how fortunate our humankind is, to be what it is today. How the formation of brains has made us one of the most civilised animals of all. This program also made me think “what is life all about? Why should this world had to be formed to face all these miseries? Is life all about making our genes passed to the next generation no matter how? Is this life all about cruelty and only about survival of the fittest?”

Then seeing my miserable face, my hubby got concerned and recited a poem by W H Auden(he loves poems).

This poem was written when W H Auden visited the museum (Musée des Beaux Arts) in 1938 and viewed the painting by Peter Brueghel. The Poem is based on this painting and the story behind it and the theme is the apathy with which humans' view individual suffering.

The painting is about Icarus a Greek mythological figure, also known as the son of Daedalus (famous for the Labyrinth of Crete). The story is, Icarus and his dad were stuck in Crete, because the King of Crete wouldn't let them leave. Daedalus made some wings for the both of them and gave his son instruction on how to fly (not too close to the sea, the water will soak the wings, and not too close to the sky, the sun will melt them). Icarus, however, appeared to be obstinate and did fly to close to the sun. This caused the wax that held his wings to his body to melt. Icarus crashed into the sea and died.

The picture which is exhibited in the museum shows Icarus's drowning feet on the right side:

The poem goes as below:

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

Oh what a beautiful poem this is, it is so inspiring!!!

After listening to the story and the poem and after seeing the breathtaking and beautiful painting( on web of course), I felt that, no matter what miseries hit the world, the life still goes on. If people in one part of the world are suffering from famine, floods, poverty, physical abuses, and struggle against all of these, then the people on the other part of the world lives on and their life seems unperturbed by the incidents happening on the other side of the world. Shortly saying Life goes on..

"In three words I can sum up everything I've learned in life: It goes on."
-Robert Frost

Reference:
1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mus%C3%A9e_des_Beaux_Arts_(poem)
2) http://poetrypages.lemon8.nl/life/musee/museebeauxarts.htm#poem