343 Monday musings: the Tweets of the Sparrow

343 Monday musings: the Tweets of the Sparrow

The Sparrows Tweet.

‘’The trouble is that we focus on the wrong part of the word human being’’, the little sparrow tweeted in a croaky voice. ‘’We must be more worried about the 'being' rather than the 'human'.

He was astounded how little sparrows could sometimes tweet so profoundly even as they are perched on slender branches balancing their lives precariously. Survival and the profound often do not go hand in hand. One is so used to witness the drudgery of the mundane kill the propensity for the sublime. The sparrows could be philosophers even when they clung to the branch for their dear life. No wonder they say that the best bravery is when one is most feared, the best poetry when most anguished.

Sometimes the little sparrows turn out to be not so little after all nor are the tweets as incongruous as they appear in the first instance. One must listen to the little sparrows more intently. Little sparrows who are gentle and lovely and quiet. There is great power in their quiet. The quiet is often heavy with the weight of the unexpressed. The unexpressed often extracts a heavy toll from the ‘being’.

‘’Being? Being! Being.” A question mark, an exclamation – or full stop. Each laden with so much mystery.

He wanted to ask so many question to the wise sparrow. How does one figure out what was his ‘being’? - he had not yet figured out what was it to be a human? Do other animals feel the burden of the ‘being’ as much as humans and does every human worry about the question of his ‘being’?

Does an increasing awareness of the darkness of the soul and its imperfections improve our connect to that ‘being’ or sully it? He knew of good people and bad people who had no scruples in doing bad things and virtuous things when life had thrown at them the unexpected. He wondered what was their ‘being’ when they flipped- does our core finds it easy to flip? Is there pain flipping – is that pain exaggerated? Must there be shame in flipping?

Love dies. Loyalty erodes. Goodness rots. Kindness begs for mercy at the altar of survival. He wanted to ask the wise sparrow what she had to say to all these questions on the subject of the being.

He wanted to check with the little sparrow if the ‘being’ ended with an exclamation mark – a wonder that was at the mysteries of human heart. Was there shock at what one encounters when the ‘being’ bares itself; was there surprise at its malleability – circumstances could beat it into a new shape almost at will? Is there one ‘being’ that one inherits at birth and is condemned to die with or does one have the free will to change it if he did not like it?

Finally, he wanted to ask the little sparrow If all these questions were futile on the subject of the ‘being’. May be the full stop was a better companion to the word ‘being’ than a question mark or the exclamation. Being. Full stop. Period. It’s the end of you. One might have begun deciphering the many mazes of his mind, one might have begun moving into the many dungeons of his heart but all of this had to come to an end at some point. He wondered what that point was. He wanted to ask the sparrow.

As the little sparrow prepared to fly from this perch, as is the wont of little sparrows, the last question on his mind were – will the sparrow come back again to ask a question as unanswerable as this. He knew it was not the answers we always cherish as much as questions that we do not have answers for.

Guru