When does death occur? When the brain ceases to function? Or maybe when the heart fails to pump blood?
While this question is important, consider this: Maybe life stops long before either of these two calamities. Long before the ambulance is called, long before the coffin is ordered and long before the loved ones and friends make their formal(sincere for a few!!) cries, he/she's already DOA.
Life is not about drinking Coca-Cola or riding fast cars. To misquote a famous song, we are frequently looking for life in all the wrong places!! These wrong places make us think we are alive for a brief moment. But they have no depth of meaning or purpose. They pass and vanish as if they were never there.
After say about 60 or 70 years of chasing these illusions, the synapses of the brain may still be firing and the heart may still be ticking, but the life is all gone. This is the burn-out that we see on the faces of the old. They have given up because they never found the life for which they hoped. Why is it happening so? The answer I guess is there in the famous American saying : " Hope is a good breakfast, but a poor supper!!" More about "hope" later.
When one counts by years, one does not reckon any more the days. It is only with a few select people that each day is full of importance and is considered by them as having a special meaning. A really true human being does not live years but days!! As far as my case is concerned, I sincerely regret thinking over the wasted days in my life. But by God's grace, I have realise it atleast now!!
A GOOD LIFE IS NOT MADE FROM GREAT VACATIONS
Certainly, vacations on tropical beaches can be a beneficial break and diversion in the context of a constructive and productive existence. Enjoying nature and God's world is of great value, but when it becomes the "raison d'etre", life becomes distorted and meaningless. It is like subscribing to a diet exclusively of desserts. Desserts are fine when they follow a meal of substance, but alone they constitute unhealthy and disease prone indulgence. Many people indulge the life that fits the description of your youth. Curiously,they eventually tire of their endless vacation spots and in their frustration and emptiness, seek vacations from their vacations!!
There is a principle of life: Anything that is meaningful is accompanied by difficulty. Wealth is meaningful.Poverty presents people with two choices: Be poor and happy or be poor and depressed. If you have absolutely nothing and you are unhappy, man, its miserable.
However, wealth gives you three choices: Be rich and happy, be rich and depressed or, be rich and depressed but think you are happy.You go shopping, redecorate, buy a new car. In other words, you avoid your issues and distract yourself!
When one is young, especially young and rich, it is easier to fool yourself and others that you are really living as opposed to existing. It takes a discerning eye to see someone else's life-style is really not going anywhere. Most people don't want to look because to do so would also require a little introspection.
But that's the young. Everyone can see what kind of life you led when you get old.
To experience a meaningful life, it must be filled with meaningful days. A great vacation now and again just won't cut it. Smiling for the camera and laughing at the right jokes doesn't make for a life. Don't wait till it's obvious; do something meaningful in the coming year!
HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL!!
