Vitality of Life....

I had this friend of mine sending me a message. It read, “Far away in the deep jungles of Africa, every morning wakes a lion who knows it has to outrun the slowest gazelle to survive the day. Every morning in Africa, wakes a gazelle who knows it has to outrun the fastest lion to live through to see another morning.” How ironic for the species. But hey, they are just animals but for humans like us this has a far deeper and greater message. Fight and survive. Be timid and perish.
Now comes the ironical part. The very same day incidentally another great friend of mine sent me an article requesting the intended audience to live life at a pace that one is able to enjoy it. Her article was basically the one which taking an example of Swedish people tried to pass a message requesting for qualitative life rather than quantitative and materialistic one. For reference I have attached the article on the blog.

Now I was really in a fix. I was taken aback by the diversity of thinking among my friends. No two people think common is a known verse to me but such antagonistic thinking served on my platter was really difficult to gulp down. Going by my nature I always ponder for a while on such thought provoking mails and messages. And given the fact that I was sick and off office gave me an immense (read unwelcome) opportunity to ponder on such literary piece. I know i might sound quite vella out here but chalta hai yaar...once in a while you should always sit down in a corner, have a cup of coffee and ponder for a while. It just acts like a breath of fresh air in our so called corporate driven lifestyle.
My thoughts here might be totally contradictory to each other. Even I always have wanted myself to be part of qualitative and healthy living, although the thought process might be completely Utopian. The one most publicized by the Art of Living and ISKCON people or so many gurus and their shishyas. The one which provides a holistic view of life rather than presenting life in rather harsh perspective. I always wanted a life where there would have been a peaceful co-existences and healthy competitions amongst peers. Evenings full of beautiful views of sunsets and mornings full of energetic sunrises. A lifestyle where ideas could actually flow from one mind to another without any fears or apprehensions. A life where everything worth appreciating is given it’s due. And trust me when I talk about this kind of life I really don’t mean living the life of a sage marked by renunciation of all earthly materialism. Don’t confuse my words with that kind of living. By God’s grace I am still an atheist still loving all material comforts around and with greed to make my life plusher.
But having said this all I have also not forgotten my yesteryear's. How competitive and mind you ruthless competitive I have been all these years. My fight all started at a tender age of 3 when my struggle to in-script my existence in this place started with an interview for getting admission in a reputed city school. I still don’t remember the day vividly but what I remember the most is the tension written all over my parents face. My actual struggle started when I started seeing dreams sharing common aspirations with that of my parents. After all every parent want their children to be successful in whatever they do. Or rather whatever they are expected to do. The machine which I was built into was built to achieve. I wasn’t built to fall. I never knew what it meant to lose. My first loss was in the form of losing scholarship in middle school and tell you that made me more determined to achieve whatever I wanted. It gave me the nascent feeling of jealousness. Rather than commending my friends for achieving their feats I started conspiring for achieving mine. This created a platform for launching the dark side of my nature. Losing out on that scholarship was not just a stray incident of failure in my life. My existence till now has been marked by a lot of personal and professional failures. But each and every one of them inspired me to try harder. To overcome the losses I had to gain something somewhere. Nature after all believes in balancing act. I always thought this as the balance people talk about in life. Balance your failures with success. Here too, many people will plead indifference to my thinking. After all for many out here, life is never measured in the balance of successes or failures. But from where I come, I have never known any other way to measure one’s life. You are either 1 or 0. Going by the current situation around us, I guess every human is judged on the same parameter of success or failure, be it of anything.
Let me not sound very pessimist here. Even when Pandora’s Box was opened of all the things that escaped, the only thing left in the chest was HOPE. Let’s not forget that everything, however grey it may seem, does has a silver lining. I definitely feel sometimes that, one day, we all will realize what we are running after is and what are the retributions and losses in achieving it. We all will understand that achieving success is not always the best deal available. Sometimes even losing may provide so much exuberance that it may drown out the sorrow of losing out. Who knows? I definitely look forward for the day, that day, when going slow would be appreciated. Efforts rather than results would be given importance. When there will be genuine feeling within our hearts rather than malice. When rather than thinking about tensions of life, I would be enjoying it with a cup of coffee in my hand. I surely look forward for that day when I will be what I want to be, not what others want me to be.