The Ingredients of Life

Vasan Sri
A retail supermarket chain has a phrase as part of
its logo: 'Ingredients for Life'. They provide the
ingredients for life. Okay... This set me thinking:
What are the ingredients 'of' life? . It is important
to find them.
I felt that I should be able to find the ingredients of
life with my seven decades of life behind me--- having
gone around the Sun more than seventy times!
I went into my mental retreat--just a few quiet
moments---without talking to any one for nearly four
hours or reading some stuff. Some kind of introspection
or meditation on the verities of LIFE.
Note that I am no academic or arm-chair philosopher to
speculate or dissect words thread bare to find their
inner meaning --words derived from scriptures or
brought down in some tablets [clay or stone or metal


ones] from mountains or hills,or words from the mouth
of a messenger or a mystic or a 'miraculist' . There
are tons and tons of commentaries on almost all sacred
texts...I want to reflect a bit and find the
ingredients of life which keep the world and the
society spinning.
You can take a lesson or two from biologists--Darwin's
evolution or some form of creative spark with divine
designs..
The answer is simple : just two words: FOOD & SEX.
The world keeps moving and all activities converge in
these two ingredients of life. The world will go on---
without any help from any of us ---seeking these two
ingredients of life.
Take life as it comes --with successes and
failures--both are the two sides of the same coin.
There is only one major rule governing this world as
such: search for food and sex.
With this prespective , look at all other


concerns--health, prosperity,bodily comforts,recreation
,and pursuit of arts ....the two ingredients behind all
these are food and sex.
The world would go on ,in its own way-- may be modified
a little bit by human intervention--by politics,science
and technology---with wars and peace--with noble acts
and holocausts [sorry to recall this word
"holocaust"]-- yet life is governed by the relentless
search for these two ingredients--all else matters very
very little.!!
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