Good Morning friends and lots of cheers and sunshine for all. What with the rains surprising us in these parts of the world unseasonally, daily life has gone in a bit of a tizzy with the atmosphere all grey and foggy and a great relief from the unbearable heat. But this kind of random change in weather is also going to leave behind in its trail countless victims of sore throat, cough & fever and other related minor ailments. Me being one of the victims, decided to take the day off and vegetate at home to give the voice box a bit of a rest.
Throat can be rested but not the mind – mind keeps wandering here and there and everywhere and thinking of so many things all at once that it becomes difficult to keep track of the mental musings, albeit they are your own. So today I set myself a simple question to answer. The question appears very simple, but when I tried to find the answers, I got caught in the plethora of answers and could not decide the real pick.
I asked myself, what are the three things in life that can teach us the best lesson of life. As I said, hundreds of answers came to mind. On sifting through the options and weighing in the options, most got struck out because I wanted to find really meaningful things which could give us a real lesson of real life. I do not mean the cocooned, protected life most of us live. My meaning of true life is the real life people without the proverbial “Roti, Kapda & Makaan” live. I always wonder how these people survive and what must be their state of mind.
For people like us, if we really want to value our life and the luxuries that have been provided to us by life, then we must take a chapter out the book of the less fortunate ones and empathize with their experiences. The attempt to empathize itself sounds so scary that I shudder to think the thought of any one of us undergoing through such a situation in life.
After a hard round of debate and counter debate with myself, I froze on three things which I feel can actually teach us the best lessons in our life. I am putting them down below for your approval and agreement.
- A Hungry Stomach – Yes friends, there cannot be a more intense and stricter master in life to teach you life’s valuable lessons other than an empty stomach. After all, we do all of life’s routine activities, going through the motions of life with one purpose – to ensure two square meals for yourself and your family membersbecause everything else can be tolerated and people can survive, but not hunger. An empty stomach can make people commit the biggest of crimes without even giving a second thought. An empty stomach can make people give away the most costliest of possessions just to be able to fill their stomach. The feelings of love, attraction, beauty, greed or materialistic things & possessions, all go out of the window if your stomach is empty. On an empty stomach the world’s most expensive items look worthless because your mind is only seeking physical satiation of hunger – the fire that is burning in your stomach. So friends in my opinion, hunger is a great leveler and brings everybody down to the same level when it hits you – whether be it a poor man or whether it be the richest man in the world, both will bow down and surrender in front of an empty stomach
- An Empty Pocket – Another important teacher of one of the most important lessons in life is an empty pocket. I remember my late mother often advising me to be careful with money and always saying that even if you have Rs. 10/- in your pocket, you are the king because you can spend it anyway you want to. But when your pocket is empty, you have to look around and think 100 times even to be able to buy a chocolate worth Rs. 1/-. That important message of my mother got engraved in my psyche and I learnt to value money. Yes friends, it is really true, an empty pocket shows you things which you would never expect to see in your lifetime. You feel so small and helpless because you don’t have enough to do anything. You have to stretch your hands in front of others for a handout or compassionate charity to get through things. It kills you inside and all your self-dignity gets crushed and broken. I hope none of us have to go through such times.
- A Broken Heart – A broken heart is like a china cup – once broken, can be mended, but the cracks will always be there to remind you of the past. People take affairs of the heart very lightly as they feel that no one ever dies of a broken heart. Yes friends, it may be true that no one dies of a broken heart and life goes on, but physically you are alive, inside you are just dragging your carcass about, going through life’s routine. Heart breaks are not only due to love affairs as in a girlfriend-boyfriend thingy, hearts can be broken by close friends whose friendships you cherish and treasure. Hearts can be broken by close relations and siblings who are the closest to you in the world. Hearts can be broken by children whom you brought up so lovingly. The culprits causing heart break are plenty, but the impact of a broken heart and the recovery from the same is perhaps one of the most difficult things in life to undergo and many have wasted their lives trying to rehabilitate themselves again after a heart break, but without much success.
So my thoughts led me to these three things in life which I feel are the ones which can teach us the most valuable lesson of life. These take you down to the very bare basics in life as a human being and rip of all the falsities you may have accumulated to cover your outer mental persona. They expose the insides of your emotions and sentiments and leave you no ground to protect or hide yourself.
Friends these are my musings and I may be wrong. I request all of you my readers to regurgitate all that I have mentioned above at your convenience and think from your heart whether the three things I have listed above are the ones which can teach the best lessons of life or not. Do drop me your agreement or disagreements in the comments section. I would love to hear your point of view as well.
Till then take care and don’t let your brain stagnate – keep giving it fodder of thoughts to keep it alive and kicking and active…….
Dr. Rajesh Mankani
