Life is an opportunity. He who is alive has been granted this gift by the Creator . A gift is always something to rejoice in and not to grumble about. Life is about living and not about cribbing. That every passing moment drives us closer to death is a truth but that is no reason to tremble in fear. It will come when it will. You won’t be able to stall it. Then where is the wisdom in dying by millimeters in fear of death which will come some twenty or may be fifty years later?
Man is the only creature who dies so many times a day before his actual death. No bird or animal ever turns morose over the fact of its mortality. They chirp or sing and gallop and roar full throttle, expressing joie de vivre. Human children do the same. Rustics do the same thing as they sing and dance at every group celebration. So called lunatics laugh and sing and dance because they live in the present. Itinerant mendicant singers , able-bodied , and sometimes visually challenged , can be seen singing their way through life by offering public performances of their skill.
As youthful years pass , people are overpowered by a feeling of melancholy from awareness of their getting closer to old age and hence to eventual exit. Some turn sullen , crest-fallen and appear to be standing on a skeleton of straw . It is as if doom has arrived.
Prophets of doom among us complain at every turn of weather. They love gloom. They have a sickly affinity for negative things. They live in fear of sickness and easily invite it into their lives. Even a slight physical discomfort resulting from change in body energy or reserves comes to them as a looming image of catastrophe.
We shall better recall here the legendary man of letters , Khushwant Singh who lived up to the age of ninety-nine and kept making his readers laugh along with him till the end! Shall we keep in mind the Spice King Patriarch of MDH , bubbling with vitality at the age of 96 ? How can we forget the example of Queen Elizabeth , a symbol of positivity ? Is there anything to match the positivity of Nelson Mandela or Mother Teresa who lived up to the age of 95 and 87 respectively ? Fauja Singh , 104 years old marathon runner is a Punjabi superman. V Nanamahal , a super grandmother from Coimbatore does her extremely difficult yoga with ease at 99 and has trained more than a million students. Bhanu Rao does her graceful Baharatnatyam moves with amazing grace at 92.
Imparting meaning , purpose , direction and sense of fulfillment to life are the parameters that can make us understand that life is about living and not about cribbing .