I know this much about you; that you are human just like I am. That we have never met is true but knowing with all certainty that you are out there makes me feel like there is a companion going through life with me. I address this letter to you because, in a way, we are the same – life-fellows with questions that linger deep within our hearts with a tenacity that defies evasion. Questions pertinent about what the next step in our drifting existence ought to be; questions ceaselessly demanding from us what to life our attitude should be. Stranger though you are, yet a companion so dear.

I know very well there are moments you are reduced to sighs and gasps, because such moments exist for me, too. That you have many times grieved and mourned I have no doubt, for that, again, is a necessary life-fare that guarantees our companionship. All these are aspects of existence that are general and from which none is exempt. But to these also are added those aspects which are peculiar and with which life has labeled each individual, thus placing upon us a moral burden unto death – the knowledge of your own life peculiarities I lay no claim but you can be rest assured that we have both been severely measured.

This life has not been fair to any one in particular, for fairness is not counted among its natural laws. However, some of us have evolved a primordial yet relevant means of dealing with life’s unfairness by entrusting our assailed souls to a supreme being to whom we appeal in prayers and supplication.

Though it is true that our idea or conception of what constitutes the character and attributes of this Supreme Being and what this supreme one represents differ for us all, yet it must be almost certainly true that you also have your own supernatural mighty one in whom you take recourse.  To some this supreme entity is an object of intense reverence, while to some still it is no more than an idea incarnate that inspires profound contemplation, and to many still it is an invisible being with unquestionable authority over the universe and its inhabitants, yet many others conceive this supreme being as an all-powerful omniscient creator of heaven and earth and whose totality is embodied in LOVE.

The beliefs we fervently hold dear in our heart about the all-knowing nature of the supernatural entity we have chosen to communicate our fears sometimes do not satisfy the many lingering questions of our yearning heart. But then, to conclude, on a general basis, that life is unfair to all seems rather rash and even appears yet another unfair attempt at consoling ourselves. Because after all is said and done, there exists a very few percentage of humanity who appears to have had it comparatively good with life as if they have made a favourable existential pact with life afore-birth.

I know, dear stranger, that you sometimes, as I also find myself doing too often, wonder what is up with life or with you. Life, in conjunction with our various situations in it, weaves for each and all a unique and peculiar story to own. Some, though few, are bold about telling their stories, alas! Majority would be crushed emotionally by the mere attempt of contemplating their lot in life. It was Maya Angelou, of blessed memory, who revealed “there is no greater agony than having an untold story inside of us.”

But if we must on our own part be fair to this unfair life, we must admit that life, indeed, dishes out an admixture of not only the bad but also the good, not only the unpleasant but also the beautiful; except its ugly side always seems to overwhelm us more than the beautiful in its penetration and impact. Shall we consider the story of a struggling single mother whose only child was taken away from her perforce by elements dedicated to inflicting misery and who has to retire every night heavily weighed down by thought of what inhumanity her little one is, at that moment, being subjected in the hands of her abductors? Or shall we rather choose to contemplate the sad fate of a promising nation with people of great and rich diversity but whose right to peaceful, if not blissful, co-existence is constantly being threatened by situations with multi-complex dynamism that beats the imaginative and pragmatic resourcefulness of their protector-government?

Yet there remains still the story of the family whose members have been ‘dismembered’ (pun intended) through the agency of multifarious accidents easily encountered as one drifts across the face of this nation. And to add a vulgar masochistic dimension to these already grievous stories, the 21st century world has gone completely on-stage where it now has all its gory life dramas televised and publicised without mercy or a modicum of discreetness.
So, frankly, I agree with you, worthy life companion, that life is hardly ever fair and without denying that it has its way of compensating us, though irregular and unsatisfactory most times, for many of its let downs.

I do not know if it is wise to persist in addressing you as a stranger seeing that we are both partakers in life’s irreverent banquet, but as partners in this passing terrestrial existence I leave with you my most treasured heart-piece: life is as beautiful as we make it.