Inevitability of life
One of the things I try to think about often is the big-picture life. One day I wanted to spend some time reflecting on this. I wanted to find out what it means and what truth may be hidden there.
What I found out was quite interesting.
Let us take a close look and see if we agree to these: –
- Death is the end of life;
- Old age is the next stage of youth;
- The disease is but a natural part of life;
- Our Desires will be there – their nature may be different;
- The temptations will be there – the tipping point to fall out of righteousness may change;
- A lot of people we take as enemies today will feel like friends later and friends as enemies;
- Distractions from outside will always be there – only forms and shapes will change;
- The so-called “evils” will always reside in our heart
- Our urge to live, feel good, and run away from pain will always be there.
- Our mind and our instincts will try to protect us always
I will pause for a moment. I think you agree with most of them. There may be items to which you might not agree. I will only say – spend some time reflecting, thinking, and researching with an open mind. Look at places you may not have looked before.
One of the things I found difficult to agree to is that we all have evils in us. On reflection and seeing how people can change based on circumstances or an event or a single misstep – I realized that my thinking is limited by my knowledge and my experiences and my small world. We do not know the power we have, to do good or evil.
Once we broadly agree, the next question then naturally is what does it mean? What is the implication of this?
Embracing the reality
To me, it means there is no running away from these even if we don’t like them. Therefore, we better keep these in mind and keep reminding ourselves about them.
You might ask now that we see there is no running away from – how do we respond to these truths?
We have a few options: –
We can forget about them and move on. We might also ask the question if we cannot escape these, what is the point of anything? I might as well not care for these. Everything ends in death anyway.
Believe me, I try to think like that lot of times. I have tried very hard to ignore these. If everybody will have to face these – why bother?
If you look closely, you will see that our life is just a collection of moments between birth and death. We have to go thru the moments and we have no choice. This is the inevitability of life.
The next question then becomes – if we have no choice but to live – how do we live our lives?
This is the question I think people have been asking for eons. This is the question – people have tried to find the answer to in the scriptures.
Personalized Scriptures
I somehow feel that the scriptures have limitations. I feel that these are written without consideration for individual circumstances. They do not consider the challenges, situations, and individual differences.
What is true for me today may not be true in the future. What I value today – I may not value tomorrow. What is a priority to you may not even be a consideration to another person.
I feel that our scriptures have to be personalized. We are all different, our situations are different. Things in our life are constantly changing and will continue to change. People come from different walks of life and different social economic backgrounds.
We need something that considers these factors and provides a framework for life, something that provides a set of principles that guide our actions – an individual’s actions.
I decided that it is time for me to come up with the guiding principles and guardrail that I will use to run my life.
So, I came up with my rule book of life.
I like to think of it as my personalized scriptures. Reading them regularly and trying to live according to them has profoundly impacted my life.
I have realized that others can guide us and point us in the direction they think is right. The limitation of these is that we only face the consequence of our actions, not the authors. End of the day, we have to take action and take the consequences thereof. Having our personalized scriptures provide us the direction focus and guidance for life. Living my personal scriptures has brought deep satisfaction in life.
