When you realize that Life is a
gift, you will learn to stop wanting to control it!
Last evening our daughter was performing in
a dance-theatre production. Several of our friends had bought tickets and had
come to cheer her and her dance company. As the show was set to begin, and we
walked towards the gates, my wife and I were advised, by a crew member of the
dance company, to take the gate further ahead. It, we soon realized, was the
VIP gate and offered the best views in the auditorium. Our friends had gone
through their respective gates (depending on the denominations of their
tickets) and had taken their seats. As we waited for the show to commence, a
pang of guilt pierced through me. We seem to have unwittingly deserted our
friends, I thought. Then I reasoned to myself that the only option we had –
given our current financial situation, we didn’t have the means to buy tickets
ourselves – was to celebrate the fact that we have VIP, “parents’ complimentary”
tickets that our daughter’s dance company had offered us. So, indeed, the best
thing to do was to sit back and enjoy the performance!
Soon the show got underway and I lost
myself in it. On the way back home, my thoughts went back to our “complimentary”
tickets. And as I kept thinking about them, I suddenly wondered: “Isn’t this
whole Life complimentary? Isn’t it a gift we never asked for?” That realization
was awakening. And I chuckled to myself. If only we held this awareness
consistently in us, I thought, Life would be so much simpler living.
Most of our young adulthood is lost in “building
a career” and “raising a family”. Then our middle-age is spent in “settling
down” our children. And post-retirement is really about “managing to cope with
our health situation” and if we live any longer, most of us treat that time as “waiting
for death”. Very few people actually
manage to do both – which is get about issues like career, family, money, dealing
with a Life-changing crisis and such and yet live a Life that they love living.
This minority comprises those who have really understood that Life is a gift
and we must live it fully – learning from each experience and enjoying each
moment! Each of us has this opportunity, without doubt, but we must learn to
not want to control Life and take it as it comes – one day at a time, one
experience at a time.
The episode of our complimentary tickets
brought my focus back, yet again, to the complimentary nature of our Life
itself. At a physical level, given our financial challenges, my family is able
to survive day-after-day only because of “acts of the Universe and the kindness
of fellow human beings”. At a spiritual level, we understand that nothing
really belongs to us. We are just guests on this planet, who are traveling this
journey, this complimentary journey, called this lifetime! So when we came with
nothing, when we own nothing, and when we will soon have to leave empty-handed,
what’s the point in trying to control anything?
When you understand that this whole Life
you have is complimentary, that it is a gift, you too will learn to sit back
and enjoy it! Just as the way you would enjoy a show for which you have free VIP
tickets!
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