In this Vlog, I explain why it is crucial to be looking in the right direction for your Life’s Purpose to find you. Make a choice between merely earning-a-living and living fully!
View time: 3.46 minutes
Tag: Live Fully
Start living while waiting
In today’s Podcast, I reflect on the fact that we are all in a queue, waiting for our impending, inevitable death. We have two options here. Exist cowering in fear and miss the opportunity to live a full Life despite your circumstances. Or accept your reality and choose to live fully – no matter what! I draw perspectives from Anu Menon’s 2016 film ‘Waiting’! Listen time: 5:17 minutes
Why we must not get stuck with the ‘naseeb’ or destiny question
In today’s Vlog, I share my personal experience and learning on why dwelling too much on questions relating to fate, destiny, karma and ‘naseeb’, and overanalyzing Life, can be debilitating. I strongly recommend that we live the one Life we have fully!
Viewing time: 3:25 minutes
Bus Yehi Ek Life Hai!
In today’s Podcast, I appeal that we must not get confused by theories that lead to wasteful analysis of a past Life or of a future one. We must just live this one Life fully! Listen time: 5:00 minutes
Clearly, you don’t have too much time
A constant awareness of your mortality is a great way to live enthusiastically!
Interestingly, several signs and reminders on death have come my way in the last 24 hours.
It was my father-in-law Venks’ birthday yesterday – he passed on a couple of years ago, so we reminisced about our times with him on the family WhatsApp group. Besides, it was also MGR’s 100th birth anniversary yesterday. I thought back to the day he had died in December 1987 – when I had walked 18 kms (as public transport had shut down after riots broke out in Madras) to meet Vaani; it was the first time I was visiting her home. I am glad I walked that distance – she’s sure been a great companion who’s walked beside me every step of the way, these past 30 years! A close friend wrote in yesterday saying she hasn’t been able to come to terms with her husband’s passing. A reader pinged me on WhatsApp to say she was catching up with my blogposts after a while because she had lost her mother last week. And then, of course, while watching a movie at a Cineplex last evening, the Tamil Nadu state government’s newsreel melodramatically showcased the funeral of former Chief Minister Jayalalithaa!
For just a brief while, as I lay in bed trying to fall asleep, I wondered if there was any symbolism in so many death-related references and inferences in one day. Given the fractious family I come from, it has been a few years since I have met my father although we live in the same city! Momentarily, my thoughts went to him, his advancing age and fragile health. I may well have begun to walk along the line of emotion and worry, about my inability to repay my family the money I owe them and, at least, repair my credit rating with them, even if I really can’t redeem my relationships there; but my awareness held me in good stead. I recalled Osho’s masterful perspective that Life and death are just two sides of the same coin; that death is accompanying us every step of the way, like a shadow, from the moment we are born. Or simply, as I have come to see it, we are all speeding towards our death, albeit at different speeds. So, no symbolism, there, I told myself as I fell asleep.
This morning, over coffee, glancing at the obituary section in The Hindu, I thought those thoughts again. If death is the absolute, non-negotiable, reality for all of us; if it is indeed that one reason which must compel us to live fuller, meaningful, happier, lives, why then don’t we live that way? Why do we fritter away our lifetimes fretting over petty material pursuits or even pettier squabbles among those that we live with?
I guess the Dalai Lama nailed it when he said, “The problem with humankind is that we think we have a lot of time!” A beautiful song from the classic Choti Si Baat (1975, Basu Chatterji, Yogesh, Salil Chaudhury, Lata Mangeshkar, Mukesh, Amol Palekar, Vidya Sinha) comes to mind. The opening lyrics are: “Na jaane kyon, hota hai yeh zindagi ke saath, Achanak ye mann, Kisi ke jaane ke baad, kare phir uski yaad, Chhoti chhoti si baat…”. They mean: “Why does the mind think up even the smallest memories of those who have gone away, after they have left us…?” The song’s essence (not in the movie’s context though) is a potent reminder of our mortality. It tells us, ever so subtly, that the inevitable is lingering around, just there, somewhere within our immediate circle of impact. It implores us to use the opportunity of this lifetime intelligently – to do what we love doing and to live happily, joyfully, with all those among us, in the time we still have left with us here.
I believe that fearing death or feeling sorry for the dead or for yourself is of no use. The awareness of your impending death, and of everyone you know, must be used very constructively to live your Life fully. To live without squandering even one precious moment. And the only way you can ensure living without wasting any of your finite lifetime is to only do what makes you happy and celebrate the presence of everyone in your Life – even your detractors, for they teach you what not to do! You will no doubt face your share of challenges along the way, not just with the path you have chosen but also with the people you meet on your journey, but your inner joy, your enthusiasm, will make the ride fulfilling, meaningful.
This reflection over the past 24 hours has only reiterated a truth about Life. Death is not the physical passing on of the human form alone, it is also what happens to you in every moment that you don’t live fully when you are alive! Think about it! Clearly, you don’t have too much time. If what I’ve shared here makes sense, then please go live that kick-ass Life you have always wanted to live but have been postponing for a better day and time. Remember: there is never a better time to live than now!
Just ‘be’ in your Zone – experience magic!
If you can find a way to give your inner joy an expression, you will be perpetually in a state of bliss!
Find out what your Zone is. Live in that Zone, play in that Zone, work in that Zone, you will then forever be blissful. To me the Zone is when you forget you are alive, you lose yourself to whatever you are doing, you immerse yourself doing only what gives you joy! The Zone knows no time, the Zone remains detached from money, from reward, recognition and material benefits, and the Zone doesn’t tire you.
To be sure, each of us has a Zone that’s special to us. Someone may find their Zone, as in Zen, in chopping wood. Another may find her Zone in cooking. Someone else will find it in art, in music, in dance. Yet another person may just find the Zone in fishing. To each one his or her own Zone. There is no problem when we operate within our Zones. The problem arises when a person who loves theatre is working as a dispatcher in a logistics company. Or when a teacher has become a lathe operator. Or when a musician has become a lawyer. My former colleague, Bobby Ghosh, once, writing for TIME magazine, demystified the Zone. He was writing on Sachin Tendulkar: “When he goes out to bat, Tendulkar seeks ‘the Zone’. It’s a mental state familiar to great athletes in which the mind filters out the crowd, the opponents, the score and other distractions; performance (in sport) is guided by a magic combination of intuition and muscle memory. Tendulkar speaks of it in terms more spiritual than sporting: ‘I need to surrender myself to my natural instincts. My subconscious mind knows exactly what to do.’” But the concept of the Zone is not limited to sport alone. It applies to anything we do. This is what Osho, the Master, calls being in unison with the Universe. It is from this oneness that world-class performances and bliss ensue, perhaps not in the same order! Reading Ghosh’s quote, and knowing of Tendulkar’s deification, may well give anyone a complex that we__ you and I__are not cut out for such divinity. You may want to conclude that the Zone is the exclusive prevail of prodigies and geniuses. Wrong. It is because people perform in their Zones that they create work that gets celebrated that makes them all-time greats.
The idea is not to get into the Zone because you want to be great or be seen as great. The idea is far simpler. If you know your Zone and live in it, you will live in bliss. When you live in bliss, you will be able to give your joy expression with your craft in more ways than you can even fathom! As Osho would say, “‘IT’ happens. Something breaks down inside you, the barriers are lost, and you become one with the Universe. A great orgasm spreads all over your being, you are in tune with existence.”
So, find your Zone and ‘be’ in it. Just ‘be’. And watch, and experience, the magic happen!
Living with awareness of your impending, inevitable death makes you live better
The truth is that we don’t have much time.
This morning we attended the memorial service of a friend’s mother. She had passed away at a Senior Citizens’ Home where she lived the last few years of her Life. So the inmates at the Home had arranged this service to share their experiences of living with her and knowing her.
It was a dignified event. No one cried. Or delivered flashy eulogies. And despite the searing heat – the venue was non-air-conditioned – the energy in the room among the inmates of the Home was so compassionate; it was simple yet beautiful in a very unique way. One of the administrators of the Home, herself a senior citizen, made a significant point: “Ultimately each of us has to go join the Maker. So, the only prayer we must have is to be able to live well and depart, when our time comes, without suffering.”
I absolutely love this perspective. Even if we can’t really order a perfect – suffering-free and instantaneous – exit for ourselves, I think that we can experience equanimity in each moment when we start living with complete awareness of our impending, inevitable death.
As the Dalai Lama points out, the problem with all of us is that we think we have too much time. So because we don’t see our Life as a limited period, soon-to-expire, offer, we go on postponing living, loving and happiness. We seem to have time for everything else – for fighting, for grieving, for worrying, for working like zombies, for being angry, for feeling jealous, for investing and creating wealth (which we cannot take away with us) and for sitting on our fat egos, but we don’t have time for ourselves, for living fuller and happier lives? Think about it – how much more bizarre can it get?
Even so, I don’t think any of us consciously chooses to squander our lives. Often times a large portion of our Life remains unlived because we think we can be happier and live better when all our problems are solved. It’s a very faulty logic that we employ to kid ourselves. But bringing death into the picture can dramatically alter things for you. Consider this – How would you live your Life if you knew you only have until tomorrow morning to live? What would you do? Who all would you call? And what would you tell the people that you have hated, fought with or remain estranged from? Remember, death is not a distant eventuality. It is right here, around the corner. Living your Life well, your way, in the time you have left here is the best choice you can make for yourself!
It is only from feeling lost in Life that you can go figure what makes you come alive
Celebrate being clueless and not knowing where your Life is going!
There may be times in Life when you will begin to question why you made the choices that you made. There may be anger and grief in you for what has happened. And there may even be guilt over what you have done that led to what has happened. As you wallow in self-pity and self-doubt, everything about your Life will appear listless, uninteresting and meaningless. You just begin to hate the Life you have and don’t know where to begin. Or how to snap out of such a state.
Relax. You are perfectly normal if you feel that way about your Life just now. It is only from feeling lost in Life can you find yourself, find focus and learn to appreciate the value of being happy despite your circumstances. I too have been there and felt exactly that way. So whatever I tell you now, I share from personal experience.
We must first understand that Life by itself has no meaning. You came with nothing. And you will go, when your time is up, with nothing. So all this drama of achieving, possessing, losing, reclaiming, all this is just a waste of an entire lifetime, really. But this doesn’t mean that there’s no point in living. Obviously a Higher, Intelligent (that’s certainly more intelligent that everyone around here) Energy has created you and given you the gift of this lifetime. Now if you are spending this lifetime brooding, grieving and feeling miserable, then you are clearly squandering this opportunity, this gift. Recognize that the opportunity to utilize the gift of this lifetime is with you. Nobody but you can live your Life for you. No matter who you are with, you have to act, you have to take charge, you have to get moving to create the Life that you will enjoy living. Simply, you must get down to work to bring meaning to your Life by doing all – and only – that which makes you happy.
Now, it’s quite possible that you are feeling lost in Life because you are where you are because of the choices you have made so far. It is always your past that creates your present. And it is your present that seeds the future. Since no one can undo the past, the only way you can move into the future is by living in the now. When you are clinging to the dead past, you are missing the now. Your brooding over what was is not going to change it for you. As you go along in Life you will discover that no experience is ever a waste – clearly, as Steve Jobs said, you can only connect the dots backward. So, let go of the past but learn from your past choices. Understand which of those choices made you happy. And which are the choices that you would never want to make again? Then ask yourself what is it that will make you happy? And begin to work in that direction. You must remember here that from where you are you may not be able to immediately transition to where you want to be. But unless you start making choices relating to your happiness, you will not move in the direction of where you want to be. Also know that sometimes the future you want to create for yourself may seem hopelessly distant. Or that you may struggle with getting started on the journey. This is when you must be patient and start learning to live in the now. Trust the process of Life. Things happen in their own time and at their own pace. Your job is to keep working on being happy celebrating and savoring each moment.
Knowing your ikigai helps here. Ikigai in Japanese means reason for being. But, colloquially, it also means what do you wake up for each morning? What gets you excited to get out of bed and going? Find your ikigai. And this takes some time and effort. So, you begin with a long list of things you like doing. And keep doing most of them. Soon you will realize that you love doing somethings more than the others. The list now gets shortened. And soon again you will discover that when doing a thing, or a couple of things, you just feel blissful. That then is your ikigai. Start focusing on it. Do it again, and again, and again. Become a master at your ikigai. When you become world-class and attain mastery at it, you not only are happy doing it, you are also profiting from your happiness because the world likes to pay a premium to engage with masters!
So, stop ruing the fact that you are lost. Instead celebrate being clueless. And get down to working on your Life. An exciting journey awaits you that will help you understand who you really are and what makes you really come alive and be happy.
Live fully each day, learning from people, things and events around you!
We often miss all the learning that Life serves up on a platter daily!
Each day offers a treasure trove of inspiring people, stories of personal courage and metaphors that help us understand the true meaning of Life. But we don’t pick up any of these positive, inspiring stories. We are so self-obsessed: we are busy worrying, pining, lamenting, grieving, complaining or brooding about our own lives. Or we are giving up on Life in general: talking of corruption – the Panama Papers are our latest lamentable fad – and falling value systems in public Life, the abysmal quality of governance and how mechanical, and less human, our society has become. Or we are gloating over our petty, material successes__money, fame, titles, positions! We rarely listen to another heart beat or pause to attend to someone’s pain or need.
We recently met someone whose husband passed away a couple of years ago when he was just 50. She invited us to visit his Blog. I did. Two things there struck me most the most: one, the quality of his selfless outpouring on Life, happiness and intelligent living; second, her 500-word tribute to him, celebrating her memories of him and his beautiful Life. They sure had problems – huge ones which she had shared with us which I don’t wish to talk about here. But they never allowed themselves to be pinned down by Life’s challenges. They just smiled and moved on.
The learning here is to learn to live fully despite what we are put through. Inspiring.
The other day, when I saw the full moon up in the sky, I just realized how much the moon draws from the sun. Without the sun, the moon is powerless. And without the moon, the sun’s lifecycle is incomplete! Yet neither of them has an issue with each other. They go about their daily responsibilities without issue, without rancor, in complete bliss.
Why are we humans incapable of living so simply, awakened and energized by the fullness of Life around us? Why do we fail to live utilizing the opportunity of this lifetime, within the lifetime of the opportunity? We don’t need to worry about or fear death. Because it is an inevitable truth – that’s how our human stories will end. It is in refusing to live fully that we endure a painful, burdensome lie called this lifetime!
Learn to accept and celebrate the non-negotiable, inevitable, part of Life – Death!
Accepting and celebrating death is an important aspect of learning to live intelligently.
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| Picture Courtesy: Internet |
Cricketer Phil Hughes’ tragic accident on the field, and his passing away so suddenly, has shocked the entire world. Cricket Australia (CA) has confirmed that the first Commonwealth Bank Test Match between Australia and India, scheduled to begin on Thursday, December 4, 2014, will now be rescheduled. CA says three of its senior players, Shane Watson, David Warner and Brad Haddin, are among those who have said that they are not in the perfect state of mind to return to competitive cricket. Now, contrast this view with those expressed by two former Australian captains, Ian Chappell and Mark Taylor. They feel next week’s first Test in Brisbane should go ahead as it would help the cricketers and the fans to come out and share the loss of Phillip Hughes. Taylor feels it will be difficult for the players to deal with the massive loss but “cricket is probably the best medicine to heal the pain”. Chappell, too, echoed Taylor’s views, saying going back to the game is the best way to deal with the loss. “In a strange way I think it’ll be best for the players if they play the first Test,” Chappell was quoted in an agency report. I tend to agree with Taylor and Chappell. When someone dies, the best way is to celebrate the person’s Life – and what she or he stood for. To Hughes, cricket was his Life. And what better way to celebrate his Life than play a fascinating game of cricket?
I remember how Carnatic musician Nithyashree Mahadevan returned to singing within a couple of months after her husband committed suicide in 2012. The famous Chennai music season was on then and Nithyashree was booked to sing various concerts through most of December 2012.This sudden development shocked everyone and most definitely Nithyashree. The pictures that appeared in the media made everyone’s heart go out to her. They showed a forlorn, distraught Nithyashree and most people, while sympathizing with her, wondered how she would cope. But just two months after her tragedy, Nithyashree was back on the concert circuit. She was singing better than she had ever been. And, most importantly, she was not in grief. She presented a picture of complete acceptance and inner peace. I remember The Times of India carried a picture of her singing at that concert. The picture was captioned ‘Like A Song’. Indeed Life’s like a song. It has to be sung, and sung well, no matter what’s going on! What Nithyashree has done is truly inspiring. She has shown all of us the way that we must continue to live our lives, doing what we love doing, irrespective of what happens to us.
I believe that the human ability to cope with death is hugely crippled by the way society treats death. Death is not some gory end that society makes it out to be. It is the only thing that you can be certain of in Life. If you are born, and are alive, as you are, you will die. Period. So, you must learn to accept and appreciate death. Every one of us will die. In fact, we are all speeding towards our death, albeit at different speeds. So, death must be accepted as a logical end, and, as some would believe, as a new beginning, of yet another journey through another unknown. But let’s not lose our focus in over-intellectualizing death either. Simply accept death as a reality. And do everything that you can to celebrate the Life of the person who has died in your midst. Do not grieve. Do not mourn beyond a point. Recognize that death is inevitable. Take inspiration from those who live in the slums of Chennai.These people get drunk and dance as they go to cremate their dead. Reason, as one rickshaw-puller once told me, “The dead have been liberated from living on this planet! And that calls for a celebration!”
Wise words those are. And we will do well to learn from them. For, only when we accept that death is a constant, an unavoidable, non-negotiable part of our Life, that we will actually begin to live fully! And only then will we learn to celebrate the lives of those who are no longer with us!
