As we get and spend and lay waste our powers, lots of us tend to ask ourselves, “Is this life?” But very often, we’re too scared of the unknown and never set even a timorous toe out of our comfort zones. Not that one absolutely has to. Not everyone is interested in being a nomad, a mendicant or a risk-taker. Most of us prefer stability, continuity and order. Besides, there’s tremendous societal pressure to conform, to be good and settle for a home loan, a good-mileage car, a golf/tennis/gardening/running club or a worthy charity, church group or satsang. Those permitted by life to explore such cosy activities are at the far end from crazed-by-poverty fathers who fling their little daughters into the holy Narmada, hoping at least to win them salvation, as local culture, if not religion, assures. Both the cosy and the crazed are traditionally described as samsara. What if you fit in neither? If your soul is astir with divine discontent and you must always be sailing in search of Serendib? If your face goes into screensaver mode when they talk shopping? If you’re not particularly ambitious but get a huge kick out of your work; swim amiably about in the bhavsagar, just happy to hear the mermaids calling out, each to each? Are you a freak, a misanthrope, a misfit? Surely, not! Not, anyway, if you’re woolly enough to like Constantine P. Cavafy, the cult poet of a generation past whose famous poem Ithaka actually answers for all kinds of samsara. Cavafy (1863-1933) was a modern Greek poet, born in Alexandria in Egypt, who studied in England, lived in France and Constantinople, the city of his ancestry. Some scolded his eroticism and apparent lack of idealism, while others, like poet W.H. Auden, novelist E.M. Forster, T.S. Eliot and George Seferis, Nobel laureate (1963), admired him and promoted his work. Later novelist John Fowles called him the great poet of the Levant. Ithaka urges you to keep discovering life and not stop, to actually treat the journey as the destination, to never cease finding things out in your own head, and above all, to leave your negative emotional baggage behind. The goal is not wealth but self-realisation, as mystics of each religion uphold: Keep Ithaka always in your mind/Arriving there is what you’re destined for/But don’t hurry the journey at all/Better if it lasts for years/so you’re old by the time you reach the island/ wealthy with all you’ve gained on the way/ not expecting Ithaka to make you rich/Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
