There is always something to celebrate about your Life – you just have to be ready and willing to celebrate it, that’s all!
An interesting Malayalam music video came my way this morning. It has a very catchy title: #LifeIsAdipoli. Literally, adipoli in Malayalam means ‘smashing good’ or, simply, ‘awesome’! So the title in English means #LifeIsAwesome. I went on to watch the video here. I loved what I saw. The video depicts situations of everyday frustrations – a playful kid interrupting your flow of thought as you hack away on your laptop, a crazy traffic jam, reviewing a Life that’s listless….! And then comes a fictitious animated character, a rooster named Captain Cluck, who seizes the moment, who sings and prances, reminding you that, despite all that you are faced with and are going through, #LifeIsAdipoli, #LifeIsAwesome!
Surely, there’s a Captain Cluck in each of us. Someone who wants to break free from all this worldliness. My 21-year-old daughter calls it “adult Life” and she feels “it’s pretty complicated” – you have to commute to work, slog, earn an income, look after your home, pay bills…and, if you have a family, well, you have to be the chief provider for them too! So, over time, the Captain Cluck in us dies quietly. So much so that you don’t miss your Captain Cluck anymore. And you think the dreary, rat race runner that you see in the mirror every morning – you think that’s the real you. But occasionally something will happen – you may meet someone special, you may go to a place where you suddenly connect with who you are, you may listen to an old song that brings back memories of who you once were – and the Captain Cluck in you will come alive again. That’s when you will find that your Life really is not so bad or boring after all. That for everything in your Life that you feel unexcited about, there’s always something to celebrate.
I have a friend who lives in the UK. Some years back, his business went bust. His wife left him. And she took their daughters away too. One day the man was left with just 10 pounds. Everything else was either pledged or lost – including his apartment and car. He walked up a hill on the outskirts of London and wanted to leap off from the edge of a cliff. As he stood there at the edge of the cliff, making up his mind to take his Life, a rainbow appeared on the sky in front of him. He decided to spend some time admiring the rainbow before he went on with ending his Life. That’s when he realized that although he had lost everything worldly, there was still so much to celebrate about his Life. For instance, he reasoned to himself, he still had the ability to witness and appreciate a rainbow. Why not live on and check out whatever else Life has to offer, he thought. So, he walked down the hill and restarted his Life with the 10 pounds he had left with him. That was 23 years ago. He is almost 70 now. He has not only rebuilt his business, he has also given away all his wealth to charity. He lives with his girlfriend on top of the same hill where he spotted that rainbow. And to whoever cares to listen to him, he tells them that Life is indeed beautiful!
An awesome Life does not mean it will be free of problems. Everyday pinpricks and challenging Life situations are part of this experience called this lifetime. They are inevitable. So don’t expect a problem-free Life. But you can be free from obsessing over them. This, you must learn to do by never taking your Life too seriously, too personally. After all, consider this, you came with nothing and will go with nothing. Whatever it is that you fret and fume over is not going to matter when your lifetime comes to an end. So, simply, treat your Life as an experience, as a game, as an adventure. You will win some rounds here and you will lose some. You may get what you want at times making you insanely happy. And you may have to want what you get at other times in order to be happy. But over all, if you are tuned in and are living each day fully, no matter what you gain or lose, you will find the Captain Cluck in you alive and clucking. Remember: like it is in cricket, so it is in Life, it’s never over until the last ball is bowled. So, as long as you are alive, jab tak hai jaan, keep clucking away…because…#LifeIsAdipoli!
