The end can only get us, if the fear has not got us first

Enjoying life and improving it by word and deed should keep the fear of doomsday at bay

BY RANI JHALA

The date yesterday was 12/12/12. And yeah, myself and a billion other people survived it. And boy, am I glad of that! I am 90 years old. I can barely see, hardly hear and can rarely remember things, but I do know what fear is, for it was what I have lived with for the past few months. A fear born of the knowledge that psychics, seers and ancient scrolls had predicted the end of this beautiful world.

To fight this fear, the week before a bunch of us geriatrics from the nursing home decided that if the world was going to end, we would go with a bang! So we organised an entire concert, followed by a dinner and dance. You should have seen us! We sang on a makeshift stage, some with intravenous drip still attached to arms or danced with crutches and walking sticks for partners. The very frail lay in their beds and sang with their eyes that danced with their laughter. It was the best night! It was also the only good thing that came out of the prophecy.

The staff thought us crazy, but allowed us our night. They are young and neither fearful of death, nor do they anticipate it around the corner of their life. For us and those on our way out, death is already too close. For nature to be allowed to cheat us of the last years of our natural life, seemed unfair and frankly, ‘terribly rude’.

When 12/12/12 passed and we woke up this morning with our hearts still beating and our minds still ticking away, it was like being reborn, poorer for the money we had already spent thinking we would no longer need it, but richer for the joy we had got out of it.

After all these years I finally understood the fear my grandparents had felt when fifty years ago, they too had been told that the world was ending. I remember my parents packing my sisters and me and driving across the state to be close to their parents when the moment came. My grandmother had insisted that if we were to die we should do so as a family, under the same roof and enjoying her home-cooked meals.

Another time, we were warned that a comet was going to hit the earth. But since it was only going to hit one side of the earth, we ignored the danger and were secretly glad that it was happening to those ‘other’ people, and not us. The meteor was predicted to hit close to our state but we were naïve enough to believe that man was powerful enough to deflect a racing meteor out of the path of collision.

Now the next two prophecies are looming ahead of us: solar flares that will consume the earth with their heat, and the end of the world prophesised by the end of a calendar.

The terms apocalypse, judgement day, Armageddon, final showdown and pralay have long existed. Seers have all seen the looming final battle. And the papers are full of warnings and dates. So good are they at getting their message across that people my age who already have one foot in the grave, also fear that last moment. We forget that our heart may stop beating of its own accord well before nature’s wrath is unleashed. We forget that a bushfire or flood might take our tomorrow from us quicker than a flare that will travel from the sun. And we mistake the end of the world to be the end of God’s entire creation.

I love my parties, but I don’t have the funds to sponsor a concert every time my world is rocked by another prophecy. And for those who spend hours trying to pinpoint the last day, I ask that they use that time to clean the world of the junk we are pumping into it; find alternate energy sources so that we don’t pull up the resources the earth needs to keep its shape and form; save the next generation from the tragedy of war; fill the bowls of hungry children; make mankind feel loved and wanted. When people suffer, that moment is our Armageddon. When man is killed by another, that is our apocalypse and when we keep destroying bits of this earth, that is our pralay

No man has survived the last ‘destruction of this earth’ to tell us if it ever happened. No one will survive a future catastrophe, to tell us it is occurred. And yet we are made to fear, what no-one knows for certain.

Let the children of today look forward to a bright future, let their parents know that they need not fear their infant’s tomorrow and let us, the aged population, eat our meals in moderation and not gorge ourselves for fear of not being able to eat tomorrow.

The fact that we have survived the many predicted ends for this earth proves that even if there is a calamity, some of us will survive to record the event as history. Surely it is not egoistical to believe that we will be among those lucky ones. Surely we can hope that those whose karmic diaries are loaded with negative entries, will be asked to march in front.

We survived 2000 and we gratefully passed 12/12/12. Now we just need to get past this next date and hopefully we will be home free, or at least until the next prediction. It is financially too profitable to lay these prophesies to rest, but I remind myself every moment that ‘the end’ can only get me, if the fear of it has not got me first.

By the way, what is the date today?

So good are they at getting their message across that people my age who already have one foot in the grave, also fear that last moment.

The fact that we have survived the many predicted ends for this earth proves that even if there is a calamity, some of us will survive to record the event as history

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