'H' is for history:
For a
couple of days, my weekly brainstorming
session stared me in the face, obviously chiding me for dilly dallying and wasting my time. Finally,
the inner voice brought me face to face with the computer and the blank
page eyed me invitingly.The ice was broken.
The discourse again would be about some aspects
of the incomparable canvas of our life. The way we balance it and direct it to
follow the righteous path. Our experiences play an important part in this
balancing act.
To achieve even
some semblance of success in life, it is imperative to incorporate some order,
discipline, and historical perspective to the scheme of things.
Order in life is no less important than other essentials of life. A chaotic lifestyle
is an open invitation to defeat and all sorts of complications. It takes its
toll in creating grave problems in domestic and professional arena. In short, it
may ruin your life. In this context, we may learn lessons from the impeccable
calendar which nature follows. We’re so used to change in seasons, the
spontaneity of sunrise and sunset and scores of other precise happenings that
we hardly give a thought to the extraordinary discipline of the natural forces,
which makes it possible.
Another significant angle to life is its
surprise elements, good or bad. Like the sea, life has multiple frames to its
credit. For instance, our bumpy journey here is comparable to the frightful
shenanigans, which play on the sea surface. There are times when the seawaters
are calm and serene and yet they uphold mysterious, awesome grandeur. Sometimes storms
rage on its surface signaling anxiety, caution and patience. There are tense
hours and often days of this scary phenomenon and then all of a sudden peace and
calm returns and soon the event retreats from our consciousness. Our life is
also like that. Amidst smugness of normalcy, sometimes, adversity hits us like
a bolt from the blue, disrupt our daily lives, test our resilience, and
disappear as rapidly. All of us have gone through such testing times in the course of our lifetime.
However,
many times we’re so overwhelmed by the severity of unfavorable circumstances
that nothing seems to allay our insecurities. It is here that the history comes
to our aid to stabilize us. Remembering the horrendous past events and occurrences,
how we triumphed over them with objectivity and strength, reassure us to keep
going. In the beginning, though these looked daunting and insurmountable.
History reminds us that we don’t live our lives in isolation. The
present is linked to the past as
well as to the future. History may go
back to centuries, yet it sustains a permanent link to the present enabling us
to learn lessons from the infinite records of man’s victories and defeats in
figuring out the cosmos and its diverse elements.
Likewise, religious books of all ages written by great scholars are
treatises on how to lead our lives with propriety and justness
in our day-to-day dealings.
Life is sum
total of frequent high and lows and it is man who gives it meaning by his
actions. Its great challenge is to live it.
From TOI's 'SACRED SPACE': Meaning of life
"What is the meaning of life? Life is without meaning. You bring the meaning to it.The meaning of life is whatever you ascribe it to be. Being alive is the meaning." Joseph Campbell
