Yes, that’s the question I asked myself and today I am asking myself the same again. This idea of life; Is it actually a perception or do we know for real. Let me tell you, it is not real.
I lost my friend in a car accident. She was young, she was newlywed, and she was a wonderful person. I was not in touch with her for a long time, but that’s called friendship when you know that the person is happy in some corner of the world. You don’t need to hug every day; you don’t need to call them every day. All you need to know is that they are okay. This was my perception again; I don’t know if this is exactly how everyone feels. This one accident had a huge impact on my thinking. There is an aphorism that our lives are like the candle in the wind. Indeed it is. If our lives are so fragile, so brittle, and shockingly not in our control; why do we let the external forces change our thoughts? As a child, I was taught to dream big, achieve big, and secure the future. But I now realized that we are all already dead, but want to live in the future. The present is an ignored part of speech.
You want to save, get a bigger car in the future; you want to work out from next week so that by the end of 6 months you lose weight. Why does it have to be the future? Why not now? You want to trek the Himalayas, but I am afraid if I leave now, I will lose my job. What will happen to my future? This is the practicality. How can you afford the car now, that’s the question you need ask yourself; Then the question comes, is it so important anyway.
Now let’s say, you fell horribly sick and have to take bed rest for 15 days, would you still go to work? Why should there be always a bad reason to take off? And for the medical emergency, wouldn’t you spend the money you have? Spend it on the things you love the most in your life. Do the things you want to do from the heart, now!
Life, love & attitude perceptions:
Life, attitude & love are three words that people are so well versed with that no one looks it up in a dictionary and check the actual meanings. I asked a group of people define Life, one said “Love”, other said “Journey”. Ask yourself, you have your own definition too.
The dictionary quotes, Life as “the condition that distinguishes animals and plants from inorganic matter, including the capacity for growth, reproduction, functional activity, and continual change preceding death.”
Now, for a second it may sound like it’s out of a science text book, but in reality that is what it is. Isn’t it? All the things that are happening in the world, the civil wars, the tsunami’s, the struggle for power; all this are under the purview of the definition.
And then I asked people to define Love, I got answers like “Love is eternity”, “Love is life”, “Love is magic”.
In the dictionary, it says that “love is an act of sharing and caring, without expecting anything in return.” Now you don’t need an expert to say that this is not the way people perceive love as. If everyone shared without expecting anything in return, if everyone cared, then nobody would cry.
And I asked some about Attitude, the answers were rather in their own attitude, “Attitude is identity”, “attitude is the way you live” etc.
The dictionary says: attitude is “A settled way of thinking or feeling about something”. This just proves that life, love and attitude are different for different people.
Now this brings me back to my original question: What are we doing here? You don’t know what life is, you don’t know what love is and your attitude; you don’t know what it is. We are made to wear spectacles called perceptions which block the view of reality. A spectacle in every stage of life, as a child a spectacle that there is no life without exams; as a teenager, no life without love; as a grown man, one spectacle for work and one for relationships. Only when you know what not an illusion is, you realize what reality is.
A classic example of illusion, we have this habit of pointing upwards to denote god. Why? Because we have heard that Gods descended from the skies. Now just think, when you see up, where exactly are you seeing? The earth is tilted 23.4 degrees and rotating in its orbit; it is revolving around the sun. Do you really know where is up? As depicted in the movie Gravity, we are just a tiny cell in this huge organism called the world. So until we are on the ground, we are not lost.
We need to take out those spectacles causing illusions, see the way the things are. Your friend didn’t call you today, doesn’t mean that he doesn’t care about you. Your wife doesn’t talk to you doesn’t mean that she bored of you. Your boss doesn’t support you doesn’t mean that he is against you. If you are not happy today, you are alone responsible for it, don’t blame it on others. Change your thoughts, change your mind, and get rid of the illusions. There is an initial thought of reality and later it is clouded by perceptions, the reality is lost at bay.
Again, what are we doing here?
No one ever knows. You live today, inspire one person. You live tomorrow inspire many more. You live many days, be inspired by life. I am here writing this, I may not be there to hear what you say about it; you may be reading it, but you don’t know if you will be able to complete it. So smile a lot, smile at everyone. You can save a life by your smile.
Devote one hour of your day that is 1/24th of your day for the thing you want to do from your heart. You want to express your love, don’t wait for tomorrow. If you want to succeed at work, succeed in today’s work.
Let “Carpe diem” (Latin aphorism for seize the day), be the mantra for life. After you have embedded this to your blood, sit back and relax; if there is a future, it will be great anyway. What should we do right here? Is what we do now!