Balancing act

The tree throws out unceremoniously its leaves, when they turn yellow.

Death is the final destination in the life journey of all created beings that inhabit this planet. There is none, who is not painfully aware of the inevitability of its happening sooner or later. Despite this knowledge, we cannot come to terms with the harsh reality that the person who lived and shared with us all our joys and sorrows has gone away from us for ever, never to return again. 

The trauma and the tragedy continue to haunt us for a long time. After the embers of grief cool down, and we start thinking in a composed frame of mind over the cosmic event called death, we try to explore its meaning. If we care to go deep into the matter, we come to the inescapable conclusion that Death is after all a necessity and that it has been structured in nature’s architecture.

The tree throws out unceremoniously its own leaves, when they turn yellow. These were the very leaves, which provided food and sustenance to the tree by photosynthesis, when they were green. The  yellow leaves, that can no longer be useful to the tree, are shed in order  to yield place to fresh, green and useful new leaves. 

All beings to whichever kingdom they may belong to –plant, animal, or human-have to yield place to newer beings.  Fresh waters of a river push out to the seas, old waters so that they may take their place, till they in turn are replaced by new waters.

The aged and the weak- physically and mentally- have to yield space to the young and energetic. The fitter person survives, replacing the old and less useful members of the society. Through the instrument of death, nature eliminates such people.  This is a continuous process, which goes on relentlessly and it is an inexorable law of nature. There is no exception to this cosmic law. Just imagine a scenario of a deathless world. We live in a limited world, limited in physical space and limited in natural resources that are, required to sustain life.

If we go on adding numbers year after year without any subtraction, the planet earth will be simply swamped with unmanageable numbers. 

There will be shortages of all necessities of life, inadequacies in all infrastructural facilities and life becomes unlivable. There will be chaos and ultimate collapse of the world order. So, nature devised her own way to do the balancing act and introduced the phenomenon called death.
 Natural disasters like earthquakes, tsunamis, cyclones, floods, droughts, epidemics etc. were the instruments used to do the balancing act. Wittingly or unwittingly man also contributes his mite to the reduction of numbers by waging global wars. The Second World War eliminated millions and millions of people. Perhaps it is the ploy and the play of the Infinite to restrict the numbers to manageable limits.