Seeking refuge in a soliloquy

PGP teaching has never been easy for me.  I do not know if it is my desire to win those kids’ approval or the intense engagement in the class that makes it so challenging.  

For example,  we had one of the most intense discussions today on why money has time value and the micro-economic foundations (to the extent that time permitted) of how investors choose between consumption and savings given the time value of money and their preferences as revealed by their utility functions.  Draining to say the least, in a way, while fulfilling from another perspective.

Add that to various other recent woes of my own making and I have all the conditions necessary and sufficient for a bout of clinical depression.

I turned to one of all my time fav poems, Alexander Selkirk's soliloquy, as I usually do to fight back such blues.  Good prose, most of the time, and good poetry occasionally have saved me many a time from the ravages of an oppressive mind.  

I have quoted lines from this poem in some of my posts before.  I now reproduce the whole poem below.  Read it at least once.  I would go so far as to say that a life that has not read it is a life incomplete.

I was first taught this poem by the late Sankaran Nair Sir, fondly nicknamed Himalayan Karadi (karadi is malayalam for bear) when I was in Class X.  Sankaran Nair was the ideal teacher that I hope to be at least in some future birth.  He was full of love for his students.  He loved them as much as he loved English literature.  And he could never be far away for too long from either!

Although a biologist by training he would pick up some piece of prose or poetry at the drop of a hat and get the class excited about it.  It was one such session when he was standing in for a teacher who was absent that he taught us this poem.

It was pure delight for the next fortyfive minutes as he brought alive to us Selkirk's pain.  Although his favourite student then, I knew that I had not grasped the finer aspects of the sentiment in the poem.  But the words and Sankaran Nair Sir's exposition have stayed etched in my mind for the past forty three years.

And on days such as this, as I fight back depression without the help of a shrink's couch or chemicals like SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) that mess around with the neurochemistry of this grey jelly that is called the human brain Selkirk's pain looks so real and feasible to me.

It is strange.  We humans seek the privacy of our own space even when we are in the midst of those we love and those who matter.  Yet, when we are away from them we wish to have a glimpse of them at least, as the pining of Selkirk screams out.  

I guess what we are really looking for are choices.  Modern man seems to be forever seeking options.  In essence I think we have lost the ability to commit.  I need to learn to commit.  Unconditionally.  Commitment must be the secret of happiness.  Commitment is selflessness.  True happiness lies in selflessness.

Nanni....Namaskaaram...

I AM monarch of all I survey;
My right there is none to dispute;
From the centre all round to the sea
I am lord of the fowl and the brute.
O Solitude! where are the charms	5
That sages have seen in thy face?
Better dwell in the midst of alarms,
Than reign in this horrible place.
I am out of humanity’s reach,
I must finish my journey alone,	10
Never hear the sweet music of speech;
I start at the sound of my own.
The beasts that roam over the plain
My form with indifference see;
They are so unacquainted with man,	15
Their tameness is shocking to me.
Society, Friendship, and Love
Divinely bestow’d upon man,
O, had I the wings of a dove
How soon would I taste you again!	20
My sorrows I then might assuage
In the ways of religion and truth;
Might learn from the wisdom of age,
And be cheer’d by the sallies of youth.
Ye winds that have made me your sport,	25
Convey to this desolate shore
Some cordial endearing report
Of a land I shall visit no more:
My friends, do they now and then send
A wish or a thought after me?	30
O tell me I yet have a friend,
Though a friend I am never to see.
How fleet is a glance of the mind!
Compared with the speed of its flight,
The tempest itself lags behind,	35
And the swift-wingèd arrows of light.
When I think of my own native land
In a moment I seem to be there;
But alas! recollection at hand
Soon hurries me back to despair.	40
But the sea-fowl is gone to her nest,
The beast is laid down in his lair;
Even here is a season of rest,
And I to my cabin repair.
There’s mercy in every place,	45
And mercy, encouraging thought!
Gives even affliction a grace
And reconciles man to his lot.