I was there, sitting on d edge of the hill, high up from the rest of the world, a million things zipping past my mind, leaving me with a feeling of dejection and loss. I was there, high up on the mountains, much higher than where the ordinary and lazy mind would ever think of going.
All our life, we make a million plans, to do this, to do that. We make long lists of ‘Things to do before I die’, ‘Places to visit before I kick the bucket’. All we do is plan, and never execute them. And in the end we are left with nothing more than pages and pages of scribbled lines that once used to be our plans. We are nothing, just a bunch of over excited school kids, who know very well what they are capable of doing, the heights they are capable of reaching, but who, like the fox who didn’t try hard enough, and gave up saying ‘the grapes are sour’, would make the compromise, and then cajole themselves saying the goals you set, and the plans you made were a little too high and impractical, even by your own standards.
We are the ones who make the plans, we are the ones who are initially so excited about our dreams and ideas, and we are the one to kill our ideas, just because somebody else laughed at the futility of our ideas.
Would a mother kill her child just because somebody said her kid isn’t beautiful?
We are nothing but a bunch of hypocrites, living in a hypocrite society.
Why am I the way I am?
Why am I not like a certain Mr. X? Why can’t I handle similar situations as calmly as my friend Y does? Why do I get angry? Why do I say things in anger that hurt others so bad? Why am I so bad at apologizing to others, even when I know it’s my own mistake? Why do I let things go so bad that they go out of my own control? Why do I get distracted so easily? Why do I lose my focus and dedication towards everything so easily? Why is my excitement for everything so short lived? Why don’t I smile more? Why don’t I crack jokes like I used to when I was younger? Why am I so confused in life? What do I want from life?
I give up. It’s impossible. I am impossible.
How can somebody else understand me, when I myself do not?
A strong gust of wind blowing over the western sky leaves me cold and shivering.
I put on my bravest face, and put my head up to confront the cold wind.
‘Throw me if you can. Come on, try’ I yell back.
The cold mountain air calms down my nerves, and I begin to cool down a little.
It’s ok.
What am I getting so tight about? What is it that I am so unhappy about? What is wrong in my life that I complain so much about? I am not physically handicapped in anyway. I have had a wonderful childhood, and have got the best education that any parent would have wanted to give their child. I am smart enough to earn my living by myself. I have a loving and caring family, and wonderful friends who love and adore me a lot. I am never alone when I am sick. I never go to bed on an empty stomach. I wear branded clothes. I buy myself (or dream of buying) every fancy gadget that comes out in the market. I am single and independent, and earn my own money. I spend on myself and party a lot. In short, my life is going just the way I had always wanted to.
Then why the hell am I not happy in life?
Then, like a strong gust of wind, it hits me.
I remember a story somebody once told me.
A group of alumni, highly established in their careers, once got together to visit their old university professor.
Conversation soon turned towards life, and their complaints about stress in work and life.
The old professor listened to each one of them quietly, and after every one of them had finished complaining, he suddenly asked them for coffee. The group waited eagerly for their professor to return. He soon returned with a large pot of coffee and an assortment of cups - porcelain, plastic, glass, crystal, some plain looking, some expensive, some exquisite – and told them to help themselves to the coffee.
When all the students had a cup of coffee in hand, the professor said:
"If you noticed, all the nice looking expensive cups were taken up, leaving behind the plain and cheap ones. While it is normal for you to want only the best for yourselves; but that itself actually is the source of all your problems and stress.”
He continued “Be assured that the cup itself adds no quality to the coffee. In most cases it is just more expensive and in some cases even hides what you are drinking. What all of you really wanted was coffee, not the cup, but you consciously went for the best cups. And then you began eyeing each other's cups.”
If we consider life to be the coffee, and job, money, financial security and position in society as the cups, which should be of more value to us? Are we more concerned that the coffee should be hot, or that the cup should be beautiful and attractive?
If the coffee itself is cold, then the cup, however attractive it may be, is of no value. We can fight all we want over our stupid cups, comparing with our friends and others whose cup is the most beautiful, and expensive. We can go on fighting. But then we will realize that while we were fighting over material things, our coffee itself has gone cold.
Now, who wants the most beautiful cup?
Life is no different. Our family, friends and our own happiness is our coffee. If we let them slip away while we are busy making money, waiting for that latest mobile phone to be launched, so that we can buy and flaunt it in front of others, there is no bigger fool on this earth than we.
We will let our relationships with our dear ones fade away. Our heart will grow cold, till it can love no more. We can continue running after branded clothes, till we are no longer in good health to work anymore. We can buy all the expensive cameras in this world. But in the end we will find we don’t have any friends anymore to take pictures with.
I tell you, we are losing it, losing the emotional touch. If one day machines are to take over this earth from humans, we ourselves are going to be the machines. We are going to destroy ourselves one day.
I may not be the perfect embroidery of calmness and patience. But at least I know who I am. God has made me this way, and he loves me the way I am.
Yes, I am confused, big time confused in life. But so what? So are all the others of my age.
Many of us are dying to know the purpose of our lives. We want to know what we are doing in life, where are we headed, where will we be five years from now, what will be our status in society twenty years later.
There is no doubt that we seek answers. Each person has his or her own questions in life. Why me? Why do these things only happen to me, while all my friends just cruise through? Why do I have to struggle for everything? Why am I more unfortunate than others? Why does God want to test me so much?
We all have our share of questions. But it is also the same person who has to find those answers himself. We have to seek those answers ourselves through our own experiences along the journey of life. Maybe we do not understand now why certain things happened to us now. Maybe we are not meant to understand now. Maybe we are meant to just live it now, and analyze it tomorrow. Maybe we do not yet have the good sense of understanding why our life is moving the way it is.
Rainer Maria Rilke has said “Be patient towards all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves. Do not seek the answers, which cannot be given to you now because you will not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps, then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer. “
What a wonderful thought. Just thinking about it this way calms my nerves, gives me a true feeling of well being, and return to normalcy. Everything is fine. I was panicking and getting excited for no reason. I am just living the question now. The answer is still to be delivered to me.
Most of the times, we spend the best years of our lives trying to find the answers. And by the time we actually find those answers, the golden period of our life is already over. Before we know it, we are old and sick, with no energy to execute all those plans that we had jotted down on paper. We should not forget to live in the quest of finding the meaning of life or because of some unresolved questions in our mind. In the book of life, the answers aren’t at the back. We have to go through the book to find the answers. We have to make the journey. We have to live the journey to find out the destination. It is the journey itself that matters, not the destination.
All the happiness that I seek is lying just beside me. I just have to be compassionate towards others to find it.
Standing there on the mountain side I make a resolution.
Live simply. Love unconditionally. Give generously. Care deeply. Share heartily. Speak kindly. Work sincerely, Play cheerfully. Laugh openly and leave the rest to Almighty.
And with a clear mind, I climb down the mountain, singing merrily and whistling to myself.
