This too shall pass but what is the take away?

Everyone’s life comes to an end. All phases of life are momentary. Look at the picture of Pele on the wheelchair. He was a legendary, one of the greatest footballers of all times. He had to run across the field several times, taking the ball under his control, hit a goal and repeat the process again! What kind of energy his legs had then and now why they are failing him even to walk on his own?


Coming to my events in my personal life, in the last couple of weeks, I had to meet two bed ridden people who were very active physically before uncertainty of life gave them a blow.

First one is my relative in my native town of Maski, who is in her seventies. I had never seen her sick before. She was always active, treating all her guests, keeping a conversation with all the people at home, also moving in and out of kitchen, ensuring that they are all fed properly. She had not only raised six of her kids but also several grandchildren to adulthood. She had never missed any gatherings among the relatives, kept a close watch on all the happenings and developments and many a times she had led the developments herself. Now when I went to meet her, she was sleeping on the bed. I could see her senses were active as before but the body is not able to keep up with her active mind. She could not sit on her own, was on a liquid food diet and someone had to help her answer nature’s calls. Body is aged, not her soul for sure. But her situation is no better as she has become a dependent for simplest chores of the daily routines.

Second one is my neighbor. He was the first one I got introduced to in the neighborhood when we started building our house in the outskirts of Bangalore. He was into marketing, he roamed around Bangalore on his bike, clocking 100 km's everyday easily. He was very quick in making friends, getting to know things early and spread the message around with same ease. A total extrovert person, an easy going person, he had to face lots of uneasy things of life. Call it bad luck or destiny, he had to go through serial physically injuries. First one was an electric shock blowout when an electric transformer exploded during the rainy season. It burnt one of his hands badly. Before he fully recovered from it, he had to go through a surgery and the recent one is a bike accident which broke his leg and now he is forced to take bed rest. And likely he will not able to ride a bike for the rest of his life.

When life is going good, we think it will be so eternally but the normal aging process or a sudden accident can bring a screeching halt to the pace of life. Now I am questioning myself, what should be the priorities of life? What am I doing after getting the wake-up call?

If life is momentary, it shall pass too. When you wake up from a bad dream, you will realize that whatever had happened in dream is not real. Similarly, when death happens to us, it would make us feel that the lives we had lived were momentary like a dream. While it is certain that death happens to everyone, it is uncertain that when that would happen.

The choice we have is to make the life we lived a pleasant one, Execution seems to be more important than mere planning. I am asking myself, what am I doing? Do you have any recommendations? Not the philosophical guidance I am seeking, it is the practical adjustments you have done in your daily lives that will be interesting for me.