“Just 1 Life to Live”

Human being. Life. Fate. God. Happiness. Love.

Each of these words contain so few letters from the list of alphabets of English language, but still even the best of dictionaries wont help to understand each of their exact and pure meanings. Besides their individual meanings, if we talk about connection between all of them, each one of us may have our own and a different view, but we, neither can ignore the importance of their relationship, nor can define them completely. They are infinite and divine terms carrying a divine world in them.

A Human being gets birth and ultimately a life to live. Location and Atmosphere cannot be controlled by him. Even the level of initial learning and education he receives up till an age cannot be controlled by him. We often call the thing, ‘Fate’ or ‘God’ which or who controls these for us.

But the boon that makes human being apart from other living beings is our Brain – Mind, which can connect us to our hearts and ultimately to the people and world around us. It is our brains using which we have covered the journey from hunting mans to civilized mans, and still the use of brain continues to conquer any difficult tasks, someday even overcoming God!

At an age when we get physically mature to understand things and happenings around us, or we can say, when we start using our brains, Fate or God hands over the control of our lives into our hands. Or say Fate or God go in an inactive state, and human beings gear up their brains to design their lives as per their wishes.

I have often heard people saying that everything is pre-planned, its all about our fate, we cannot change it, everything happens according to God’s will, no one can change it, you cannot own a thing which is not written in your fate.

I read a few lines in a book “The Monk who sold his Ferrari” by “Robin Sharma” -- “Life is all about choices. One’s destiny unfolds according to the choices one makes.”

If God really wanted to pre-plan things why would he give us the brains to think and hearts to feel?

Of course there are few things and a few percentages of our lives which we cannot control, but that does not mean that fate becomes the owner of our lives. Life remains a game of choices. Comparing Life to a menu of dishes, each dish may taste different with different types of ingredients in each of them. They may taste sour, sweet, bitter, spicy or even mix tastes may also be found. The taste will depend on the dish you select. Same rule is followed with our lives. The consequences or future will depend on the choices we make at a point of time. It works like a sequential process, things work in a step-by-step fashion where each previous step/choice affects the next coming step/choice.

When we use our brains and hearts to plan or design things, sometimes things may go as per plans and sometimes they may fail. Yet everything happens for a reason. Every event has a purpose and every setback its lesson. Failure, whether of the personal, professional or even spiritual kind, is essential to personal expansion. It brings inner growth and a whole host of psychic regards. Never regret your past. Rather, embrace it as the teacher that it is. Remember that the laws of nature always ensure that when one door closes another opens.

Many times it happens with many people that they fail in everything they try every time to succeed in life and get frustrated. As a consequence they blame their fates for their failure or just give up, making their own fates, the owner of their lives, wait for God’s will, and think, the things that will happen on their own will be their fates correct decisions for them. But viewing this attitude implicitly, we can notice that while taking this decision also the person is selecting a choice of life – “of letting things happen on their own”. There is no God’s will here, God did not ask you to do it, he has given you the brains to think and to decide in whatever situation you are. So I feel that nothing exist as such God’s will. The choice is yours or ours.

Also when you fail, you should take the responsibility of the failure rather finding situations or reasons to make them responsible. Every failure teaches you an another way which will not lead you to success so that you don’t use it again, just like when Thomas Edison invented the bulb, he knew 9999 ways through which the bulb will not light before lighting the bulb in his 10000^th effort. Robin Sharma, the author of “The Monk who sold his Ferrari” wrote in his book –“There are no mistakes in life, only lessons. There is no thing as a negative experience, only opportunities to grow, learn and advance along the road of self-mastery. From struggle comes strength. Even pain can be a wonderful teacher.”

So when we have just one life to live,

Let’s be the owners of our lives.

As many times we fall, let’s get up and run again.

As many times we fail, let’s learn more and again.

Let’s dream and dream and dream more.

Let’s work hard and hard and very hard to make each dream come true….

Uncertainties

What are uncertainties?

They are such questions in our life which cannot be answered as and when we wish; questions which are answered by time and we have to wait for that time to arrive to know the answers.

What role do they play in our life?

They don’t let us live in our present. They enforce us to think about our upcoming future and thus fade away the happiness of our present. They make us feel incomplete and helpless. They sometimes invoke a fear of losing something precious we have today, or of happening something which we do not wish to happen.

Why are they part of our lives?

Yet I m searching an answer to this question. What I realized until now is an uncertainty is our race against time, where we cannot see our goal point but still we have to keep running keeping our hopes and faith high and with a confidence that in the end we will be the winners. They make us realize that we are not the only owners of our lives, that we cannot have complete control over everything we wish and that we cannot understand what is actually good for us.

Mostly each one of us hate uncertainty, but it is one of the efficient teachers and a very good friend of ‘Time’ who teaches us the correct lesson at correct time. Uncertainties are unavoidable, you cannot win over them before time and you will loose over them if you give up.

So the mantra to deal with uncertainties of life is instead of getting annoyed and irritated, keep running, continue designing future but along with enjoying our present.

The Best Actors!

“Actors!” Who are they? What do they do?

In terms of entertainment world, actors are those whose profession is acting, while acting is to perform a role in a play/film. In short actors are those who portray themselves as per the character of the play/film and represent their views, actions and effects.

Now if this whole concept is compared with the life of a human being, we will feel much equivalence between a play/film and the life, and between the actor and a particular person. The minute difference will be, instead of portraying any character of some play or film, the person portrays all kinds of feelings in intelligent ways. Every person has many different roles in his life bonded with feelings and responsibilities. Now when he starts hiding his original feelings and tries to show or be something expected or required for the occasion, it is where acting skill of a person is put to test. If he does not let others even guess about the original scenario, he wins the situation, which is the usual case in today’s day-to day life of a person.

We can have numerous examples of such acting skills which we might ourselves have had played sometime during our lifetime:

The most famous case, a competitor will always show sportsmanship by praising his opponent for his win, while might be jealous within.

There will be some people around whom we consider as our friends while they might be considering us as their greatest enemy, hiding the feeling behind a good and fake friendship.

A person handling customers within any organization might be having lots of worries and tensions at the back of his mind and also having an upset mood for the day, but while dealing with customers he has to hide it under a cheerful and pleasant attitude towards them.

A usual scenario in every office, the staff members show their due respects to the boss, while cursing him all the time behind is back.

A usual case at every home, husband and wife might be fighting for last 1 hour but at the arrival of some guest at home, they will behave as normal as usual in front of them.

So besides these, there can be no of such examples showing the acting skill of a human and how fakeness covers the originality of a person. It will be tough to guess seeing a person’s smiling face that he is happy because he might be carrying a burden of unsolved problems and tensions of his life and you cannot know if he might have had tears in his eyes and cried for a while before meeting you.

And with duration of time and practice, this skill keeps improving and then gets into our blood, so we can do it without any efforts and getting noticed because practice makes a man perfect. But then, this is what life is!

Life, A True Story full of magic masala and melodrama, and We (human beings), The Actors - The Best Ones.

Strengths And Weaknesses

Strengths and Weaknesses are antithetical and inevitable aspects of ones life. They constitute an important part of our personality and identity, and play a vital role in differentiating us from others. Though so many of us don’t have an idea of importance of knowing them for self.

All of us love to be praised by others for having some special quality or for being good at something. Now what will happen if we get obsessed about the quality we are praised for every time? Shall we not start overestimating ourselves and stop improving, or rather start deteriorating? At the same time, what will happen if we are criticized about a habit or a weakness too badly? May we not get depressed, loose hopes and self confidence? So either remaining too conscious for having few weak points and ignoring our strengths, or too obsessed for having some strong points and ignoring our weakness – both the cases give a bad idea.

That is why we should concentrate on self and try to judge, what are we good at? What is it that makes us apart and special from others? On the other hand also judge, what are the uncontrollable things of self? What are our negatives that can show us down before others? Getting answers to these questions will help us develop, control, identify and embody ourselves in a much better way, and make us a better human being.

Being a human being, it will be required to keep a balance between our strengths and weaknesses as no one is perfect in this world. So if a situation comes when you are showered with praises or criticism, you can be the best judge of self to tell yourself----

“Buddy! Keep on, don’t stop, you have a lot to do, the journey is yet not finished and the destiny is yet to be reached. So just buck up!!”

Desires and Realities….

“Oh God! Please don’t let this happen…..”

Once you will say this and I dare “this” is going to happen. Mostly all of us have gone through such situations. So often our realities prove to be the most undesirable happenings. I often try to talk to the “Divine Energy” and ask the reason about it but have not found any exact reasons. Some may think it is our deeds that cost us, while some may feel it is the game of individual’s fate.

Being a human being we are gifted with “golden” hearts and “diamond” minds. Desires come from our hearts. They are like free birds flying in the open sky with no limits. These desires are controlled by our “diamond” minds which make us aware of our realities, often undesirable realities; we never want to be aware of. Still the world runs in reality, so we have to accept and live them.

So often I have heard the words “Listen to your heart and you will always be right”. But more often I have experienced that listening to your heart proves the most unwise decision, not for us but in our social life, which ultimately stops us not to listen to our hearts next time.

Our hearts always knows the wise deeds and always talks to us whenever we have to take any decisions, while our minds controlled by the worldly societies often does not allows us to do them. Once you stop listening to your heart for a longer time, it will stop showing you the paths and you won’t be able to talk to it anymore. Then you will start doing the things which are right for this world, not for you. This is “True Politics”, politics with self. Often knowing the correct thing you will be forced to do the wrong thing, to change yourself, your real “I”.

Being a growing up entity of this social world, I want to convert my desires into my realities, I want to be true “I”, I want to transform, transform my negative energies into positive values and make myself better without changing my real “I”. I have used “I want to” because these are not dreams but burning desires.

And lastly whenever my desires won’t become happenings, I will not change my attitude, but I will think that something much more worthy is awaiting for me and start desiring for it.

So the key is “Don’t stop desiring until they become happenings.”

The Pursuit Of Happiness

Everyone knows the dictionary meaning of happiness, that is, to be pleased and contented. But still we find it difficult to achieve it. We always try to find it around us through different things, activities or people. But no one has yet been able to define the exact source of happiness. I, being a student, have heard many times from my elders and teachers that you will be successful if you find the path of your life that gives you happiness. But I have yet not found that path, the reason what I feel is, yet I am not aware of the thing that will give me the happiness along with the success. This path seems to be a kind of labyrinth, when you feel you are reaching the end, another twist is introduced and again you get engaged in finding and achieving the true path of happiness.

Till today, what I have learned about happiness is to find it while getting engaged and absorbed in my daily actions. I try to enjoy my work without any respect to failure or success in it. I also find happiness by pleasing people around me, making them smile or helping them with their problems. I don’t feel like finding a path of life that will give me happiness. I feel like the path will find me on itself.