Charity Begins at Home

It is an old saying which holds good in every sphere of life. It means that a person's first duty is to help the members of his own family. Any act of goodness can be in the right direction only if it spreads goodness all around, but a good act must be started from one's own environment. Everybody should do good to his family members first. Charity to others at the cost of starvation at home cannot be appreciated. If a man ignores his family members and does good to others, he is most likely to the an object of ridicule. The family members are the first charge on one's resources. If somebody is in a position to do some good or to extend some help assistance monetary or otherwise to others, he must see to it that the members of his family are not left in deprivation. It is only after the needs of the members of the family are full met, the help and assistance may be distributed among others. Here, too, there is comparative priority relations, friends, community circle and so on and so forth.

If we take the case of social reform, a man should first try to introduce reform in his own family. instead, if without reforming his own family, he tries to reform others, people will not listen to him. He would rather end up in failure. It does not carry any weight if a chain smoker advises others to give up smoking while he himself does not give up the same. It is better that if one presents his own example?. Philanthropists donate money to educational institutions, hospitals and orphanages. but before doing so, they must try to satisfy the needs of their family, relatives, friends and community. A doctor must attend to the health problems of his own family members before extending medical advice or assistance to others.

What is This Life it Full of Care We Have no Time to Stand and Stare

Man is the best product of nature; the crown of God's creation. Human life is the greatest adventure of nature; the miracle of creation. It is the capital of individual enterprise on earth. But we got this life with a divine decree expecting us to remember, "By the sweat of thy brow thou shalt earn they bread." The sermons, the sayings and the valuable words of great writers remind us that we must work in order to make our lives sublime and leave the memory of our glory. Ruskin said, "If you want knowledge, you must toil for it, if food, you must toil it and if pleasure, you must toil for it; toil is the law." Franklin answered a question with an advice, "Dost love life? then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of."

Bishop Cumberland advised, "Better to wear out than to rust out "E.V. Debs glorified toil when he said, "The workers are the saviours of society, the redeemers of the race." Cleveland has packed the total philosophy of life in his saying. " Honour lies in the honest toil." H.W. Longfellow inspired mankind by Singing,

We Live in Needs not in Years

Mere longevity of life, if not coupled with good deeds, is  quite meaningless. Our life is ninety per cent perspiration and ten per cent inspiration. In whatever sphere of life we are placed, we should do our work with unflinching devotion. Better to wear out than to rust out. Whoever has done deeds worth remembering, has no need of ancestors. A ploughman on his legs is higher than a gentleman on his knees. One who lives long without doing anything great on the earth, passes out of world's stage' unwept, unhonoured and unsung'. True life consists not in the length of our existence on this planet of our, but in the noble and heroic deeds we do. Ben Jonson has rightly said. "A lily of day is much fairer than the oak which stands for three hundred years only to fall a long at atlast-dry, bald and serene."

Many men in this world live to a ripe old age, eating, drinking and hoarding. As soon as they away they are forgotten. On the other hand, there are men with very brief span of life who live nobly and intensely and leave behind them their memories and works forever. Through their noble deeds they leave an indelible impression on our minds.

Drama Holds A Mirror To Life

Life consists of human activity, the highest object of which is man. Art literature are the branches of knowledge, inseparable from life. In them we can discern a deep and lasting human significance. Literature, drama being a part of it, grows directly out of life and brings us into large, close and fresh relations with life. Greater the association the more will be the worth of that literature. It is a sort of vital record of what they have thought and felt about those aspects of it which have the most immediate and enduring interest for all us. It is the fundamental expression of life through the medium of language. This expression is further moulded into various literary forms and drama being the imitation of life with an occasional modification  has a significant association.

It is life itself so to say, a reflection true to the everyday life. Drama reflects the great drama of life itself and offers us a true sight of life, true and mirror-like. The colouring of imagination that the artist gives takes its shades from life itself. Our interest in people, their doings and also in our world finds expression in that which recaptures this urge and presents it as it is. The self-expression of the dramatist includes a great deal of our own thoughts and feelings which are again akin to life, so he is not a different character.

The Principal Business of Life is to Enjoy it

Men live, while animals and birds exist. And so they do not live by bread alone howsoever uncultured they may be. It is something more than bread that they are constantly in quest of. Discontent and disappointment have a strong grip on them their labour remains the labour of a slave. The they fret and fume like a fidgety and restive horse tethered in its stable. And when their enigmatic desire remains unfulfilled, they philosophies if they can think, otherwise they demolish what some in the fulfilment of their known or unknown aspirations accomplish.

But what is that makes a man's life full? what is the complement of his labour in diverse fields? what is the incentive to labour? The answer to all these questions is only one thing, so abstract, yet so real. And that is 'pleasure', which all struggle and aspire for, but few achieve in the true sense of the word. In most cases it remains will-o' the wisp.

No two human beings being alike, the ways in which people try to get pleasure from life are hardly despite the seeming similarity in their means tot he end. Apart from that one's temperament and intellectual caliber greatly determines the manner in which one hopes to get the maximum of pleasure.

The Principal Business of Life is to Enjoy it part 2

If some think that there can be no pleasure better than what thrills their senses, some other try to have it from what provokes their intellect and satisfies their aesthetic sense. Some such persons get pleasure from reading poetry: while others, by writing it. If at one moment their job is akin to the one which John Keats had when he first read Chapman's translation of homer, at another moment it is the all engrossing pleasure which Keats had when he wrote the Grecian Urn and thought that a thing of beauty is a joy for ever, In face when some of us prefer to read the Meghaduta to listening to pedestrian film songs it is a question of our taste and concept of pleasure.

Whether we are the pensive men of Milton's it penseroso or the cheerful man of L' Allegro, pleasure remains the sole purpose of our life. In that case we love to read War and peace instead of seeing the filmed version of the novel though distributors and exhibitors may lure us by tempting advertisements. Then we prefer a Satyajit Ray's film to the beat-film which is not so great a box-hit that it runs for fifty weeks. A question of taste, of course nothing else.

The Principal Business of Life is to Enjoy it part 3

It does not imply that only creative artists think that life is to enjoy it and nothing else. Our explorers, conquerors of invincible peaks and scientists are inspired by the same passion. Exposing themselves to the incumbencies of weather, the explores go on the uncharted oceans, the mountaineers brave the most unfriendly weather, and the scientists prefer the company of the mute insensate to the enchanting warm embraces like Aldous Huxley's genius in his novel entitled The Genius and the Goddess. Because nothing else would give them a feeling of joy. Cut off from their cherished pursuit they world feel like a person pushed into an abyss of misery.

But what about the politicians? Is not their sole aim to have power? Do they not love to be honorer and feared like gods who sit by their springs of nectar heedless of the weeping and crying men struck by calamities? Or are they not possessed with the earnest zeal to better the lot of the underdog as in some communist and socialist countries? Do not they, who like Che Gulvera (though not suffering from chronic asthma like him) prefer the risky life of guerrillas to snug comforts of peaceful home life, spurn the joys of life? To raise such questions is nothing but to betray one's ignorance of human nature.

Drama Holds A Mirror To Life Part 2

In this respect let us look into the growth of English drama in a passing manner to assert our point. The subject of the Miracle plays of the 12th Century, were taken from the legends of the saints and acts ascribed to them, while the Mystery plays had scriptures for their subjects. Their teaching was of a religious nature. The morality plays, later, actually personified virtue, and though they were not ass true to life as were the interlude in the Revived Era of learning, yet their influence was meant to throw a heavenly light on life. 

Now the public which showed an interest towards historical studies sought in its drama the treatment of actual human life and affairs. The characters in the interludes were real men and women even of English life of the day and these served some purpose. Pageants, Masques and Pantomimes were at a later age, sources of delight through drama, whatever their nature may be, they echoed those aspects of life, which were amusing and light in their own way.

Drama Holds A Mirror To Life Part 3

With the pageant of life as its eventual subject, drama as well made nature of the today has a tendency towards naturalism which is all the more true to life. This progressive movement has an  all round development in social, intellectual and critical fields, but its most universal quality has been a life-like character. It has been the endeavor of the dramatists to present the out ward semblance of life as closely as possible. It is a definite form of art like naturalism in painting and not like that of the photographic art. It never was photographic. the imaginative colouring of Shakespeare of the plays is strictly in the order of painting though the subject was from life.

Naturalism is indeed a form of style and gives impetus to the form wanting style."The dramatist says Ashley Dukes, "Who takes pen in hand to portray everyday life in everyday speech must be a writer, a writer in the ten thousand if he is altogether to avoid the rut of ordinary expression. The dramatist is to seek the help of style, if he has to make his individual idiom more homely and if he is to clothe the apparent reality in a proper manner.

We Live in Needs not in Years Part 2

Shelley, Keats, Byron, Toru Dutt, Christ, Shankaracharya, Vivekananda, Chaitany Mahaprabhu and Netaji- all died at comparatively young age. Shelley was drowned when he was thirty years of age; Keats died of consumption at the age of 26 years, byron shuffled of his mortal coil at the age of 36 years. Jesus Christ was Crucified when he was hardly thirty years of age. Swami Vivekanand could not attain the age of forty before he bade good bye to this world.

All these gems left behind them idea and thought which have revolutionized the moral and spirituals lives of the people. The Greek conqueror, Alexander the great had attained world-wide fame before he died only at the age of thirty-two Emperor Shersha Suri ruled just for five years and still has the honour of being called the four-runner of Akbar, the Great. Sidney Keyes died prematurely at the age of twenty one, and still he carved out niche for himself in the field of modern poetry.

What is This Life it Full of Care We Have no Time to Stand and Stare Part 2

Modern man forgets Omar Khayyam who said "Dead yesterday and uncertain tomorrow-why fret about them when today be sweet." In his mad pursuit of beautiful future, the man of today mocks at William Henry Davies when we ask a modern man with a scientific and economic bent of mind to stand and stare, he ridicules the idea as an attempt to create a team of idlers and wasters. Man of this machine age contends that he, who asks to stand and stare, is only a romantic lover of nature, for away from the hard realities of modern life.

But man is a poor judge of his actions. He, miserably and unfortunately is oblivious to the grim reality that leisure is very essential in life. Leisure has always been the cherished privilege of man. Leisure does not mean idleness. True leisure is really the time which a man has earned by sheer dint of hard work. Leisure is constituted by those rarest moments of life which a man can really claim to be his own. Leisure is the quantitative and qualitative measurement of human life. Leisure is the supreme opportunity for man to transform himself into something more glorious than man.