What is life?[1]
Last Thursday on 30th of Farvardin me and a bunch of people who work in the fields of literature, politics and off-course some of my journalist colleagues we went to watch Around the world in 80 days written and directed by Jalal Tehrani which off-course doesn’t have anything to do with Jules Verne and is not even similar to the past works of Jalal Tehrani. An absurd performance and heavily influenced by Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett, about the coordinate of human beings along the width and length of the universe; the fact that we are always moving on a closed circle, and yet we are looking for the start and the end of our lives. Doesn’t really matter how conscious we are about our life. The two characters of the play; Babaei (a symbol for knowledge) and Javan (a symbol of ignorance) they are two sides of a coin. Because they are both insane in a way, the goofiness of Babaei and carelessness of Javan. Isn’t different after all. Both of them are lost in the riddle of life. Javan answers all the questions of Babaei with “it is what it is” which means there is nothing we can do. The deep and obsessive understanding of Babaei that has led him to madness is the other side of the coin, which isn’t different from ignorance. In Babaei’s eyes, through life humans only have two ways to take; you rather glance at your past which is repetitive becomes meaningless and boring, or you search your future which is also absurd. It’s the important spiritual question.
Ahmad Talebi Nezhad
[1] Sharq newspaper,2016