Being ‘Next to God’

A certain Indian film actor was considered to be a superstar. “Being at the top”, he wrote when he was at the peak of his career, “is a feeling of being next to God.”

The American boxer Cassius Clay, who changed his name to Muhammad Ali, was a big name in his field. He was said to be a ‘world champion’. “I am the king of the world. I am the greatest”, he is reported to have declared.

But the final end of the Indian superstar and the American boxing champion proved to be the same—just the opposite of what they had boasted about themselves! The former suffered a long illness and became a virtual skeleton, dying at the age of just 69. Muhammad Ali suffered for a long time from Parkinson’s disease. Towards the end of his life he became wheelchair-bound and had to be repeatedly hospitalized for various ailments until finally he died at the age of 74.

The death of these two men illustrates a general predicament of human beings. When someone obtains a top position or wins some big success, he revels in his imagined glory. Instead of thanking God, he considers himself to be like God Himself. History tells us that such people are finally brought low and then pass away. But strangely, people who come after them do not learn any lessons from their folly.