24 March 2009

Flowers for Algernon

'Flowers for Algernon', a book title, is the story of a science experiment that attempts to make a genius out of a person of very low IQ. The experiment succeeds, but then fails in other ways. The main character's name is Charlie. Algernon is the name of the mouse on whom the experiment was done first. An eponymous movie was also made about it which went on to win an Oscar.

In Charlie's life I could see reflections of my own and images of all of our lives. The acceptance and love which we seemingly find as a child - where we do not have sufficient 'intelligence' to differentiate between when people are pleased to see us versus when they are making fun of us. Where we have faith in everyone and everything and believe in the good intent behind all actions no matter how malicious.

It is the story of our lives as they evolve into adulthood where receipt of such unsolicited affection is replaced by a never ending effort on our part to seek acceptance and love. And the story of our life can be written as the tale of this path that we take to reach that goal - through accumulation of wealth, or power, or knowledge, or spirituality, or a myriad other things - only to discover that that which we sought to unite us with another only served to isolate us even further as the other became envious, jealous, or simply lost the ability or the desire to relate to this alien that we had become to him or her.

It is a story of our lives in which we see all our accumulations crumble upon us. How we lose that which we so cherish and hold dear - to time, to world, to circumstances. And how in the loss of each little thing there is a part of us that dies with it. Little by little, until one day there is nothing left of us.

But man has succeeded in creating a great illusion of hope which keeps him driving until the end. Even then hope does not end and tugs on ones sleeve with a promise of reincarnation or an afterlife or a business like exchange promise for the deserving results of this life's actions in the next.

It is quite ironic that that which we depend upon to unite, brings about division, that as the number of people increases, so does the loneliness of each person. Life is perhaps an irony, perhaps a paradox. One leaves home and travels far and wide in search of that home.