The Search

"that is because you *see* Watson, but you don't *observe*." Sherlock Holmes' most famous line. You can see Dr. Arthur C Doyle speaking here, as he parallels the most cliched line in any medical college.

"The eyes see only what the mind knows" a line injected into every medical student, more so, to a student of Pathology. Only when we know what to look for, do we search for it, and then find what has been staring at us all the while.

While this is indeed true, not everything becomes clearer as we search. There are things that Sherlock Holmes, the expert observer, could not find. "Hence the cocaine. I cannot live without brain-work. What else is there to live for?"says Sherlock. In his opinion, solving crime is the only way of life worth living.

While Sherlock was solving crimes in Baker street, Henry D Thoreau was doing nothing in concord, and was doing it well. He had a different opinion about seeing and finding things.

"Will you be a reader, a student merely,or a seer? What is a course of history, or philosophy, or poetry, no matter how well selected, compared with the discipline of looking always at what is to be seen?

There were times when I could not afford to sacrifice the bloom of the present moment to any work, whether of the head or hands.

Sometimes, in a summer morning, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in reverie, amidst the pines and sumachs, in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the birds sing around, until by the sun falling in at my west window, or the noise of some traveller's wagon on the distant highway, I was reminded of the lapse of time.

They were not time subtracted from my life, but so much over and above my usual allowance." says Thoreau.

Tranquility reaches a still mind, not the one searching for it.

Though Sherlock Holmes and Henry D Thoreau appear diametrically opposed, they are not that different.

Sherlock often talks about "pursuing art for art's sake". His pursuit has no ulterior motive, but is an end in itself. He solves crimes, not to save the victims, or bring criminals to justice, but for the bliss of solving the puzzling crimes.

Can one just live for life's sake? With no ladder to climb, no great contribution to be made, no side to take, and no group to belong to. Is that a pursuit of the art of living?

In a society that values only the professional in us, only we ourselves, can value the time and effort we put into the self.

When the profession is highly demanding and equally rewarding, as for a detective or a doc, it is so easy to lose ourself in that 'larger than life' role. At the end of the day, profession is just a facet of one's life as a whole, and like any other facet, can't define a person. A set back in profession, doesn't imply that the person is a failure.

With no scale measuring our worth, no hierarchy ranking us, and no moral question judging; as just another one amongst the billion, is our life worth pursuing?

Or, is it that, only a life at the apex of an imaginary pyramid, the only life worth living?

What do we have to find, as we see the beautiful moon rise, far beyond the crashing waves, other than tranquility and the bliss of life.