We often come across this question as what is life?
It’s somewhat a little difficult to define life unless we have lived it. Life is a gift from God so as to live it, we got to value it, appreciate and accept it. Being a Sadguru fan, I heard him saying in one of his posts that the reality that you are having a life at first place is a thing to appreciate. And I truly believe in it; we are alive and having a life is a thing to cherish. Also if we see around us anything that has life is so beautiful be it a small spurt of a root and a shoot from a seed looks so beautiful, the transformation of a larva to a full blown insect is so magnificent, a tree full of fruits or flowers so pleasing, a small chicken cracking out of an eggshell is so amazing and if we come to us humans what can be more wonderful than the birth of a child signifying a life coming into being. So, if we look at it this way that anything that has a life signifies the beauty of life.
So how can one define life? Life can have its own definition to each self. Like I was hearing a podcast of Sudha Murthy where when asked how she will define life she said, “everybody have their own way of defining life as it is with respect to their experiences”. Such beautifully explained and so true as well as it is totally up to us to define our own life. Because if we don’t have a definition to our life then we are just existing in this world with no meaning to what we want from our life. We humans, being the most intelligent living being on this earth, live with some or the other goal or a purpose in our lives and that becomes the most important existential reason for us. So, to the people who understand this enjoy living their life and for those who don’t start doubting themselves and get into existential crisis. But why? Why do we start having existential crisis? Why can’t we find a purpose or a meaning to our existence? This is because we start to compare our life with others looking at their achievements and not understanding the value of the hard work or the struggles of that person. We like to see the brighter side of everything so that we find a reason to crave for it in us. But have we ever tried to see the or understand that person’s determination to attain those achievements. The answer would be mostly no. Why because, then how will we self-pity ourselves and totally understandable it’s a human nature. But no, that’s not how it is we do have a choice, and the choice is to stop comparing our lives with that of others and try to do whatever we can from our side to make it beautiful in our own way. The day we stop comparing ourselves to others, we evolve as a more confident and accomplished person and find a new meaning to our life that can have a definition of its own.
So, if someone asks me to define life, I would like to sum it up as a beautiful ship in the ocean where we are the sailor, the ship is our life, and the ocean is the circumstances/challenges around us. So now if the sailor knows how to maneuver his/her ship in the high and low tides of the ocean as in where to slow down and speed up a little to maneuver the ships way through the ocean he will have a safe and happy sail. And suppose the sailor starts to race with a passing ship whose sailor is a little more efficient and knows to maneuver his/her ship a little better than us then we might get into trouble and start feeling helpless. This helplessness usually comes when we don’t take balanced decisions involving both our mind and our soul. Like when we listen to our heart and think emotionally and we fail we start to doubt ourselves thinking we are emotional fools and if we take the decisions based on our mind and we fail we start to think that we are overthinkers. So, it always has to be a balanced decision that we should take thinking both practically and emotionally and that ways we will learn to listen to both our mind and soul. Also, by doing so we will learn to find a balance in our lives and start to appreciate it better and learn to value it even more.
Theclaritycatalyst 