Because, ‘Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara’

Do what you love doing! And live Life up as long as it lasts!

Another year is ending. And a new one begins in a few hours from now. Across the world people have made plans for night-long revelry and partying. Soon, as a new dawn breaks, the new year too will become predictable – and at the end of the first week, will even become routine, boring and pedestrian. We will all have returned to our daily lives, back from vacations and parties, running faster and faster on Life’s treadmill – only to discover that we are not getting anywhere. We will continue to complain: that there isn’t enough time to follow our dreams, that whatever we earn is just not enough, that we never seem to be finding true love or that our health challenges are becoming more and more unbearable.

Why is it that we often feel good when we are vacationing or are at a party and never quite feel good about the biggest party of them all – Life?

The answer lies in our understanding of Life. Or the lack of it!

Michael Schumacher's Helmet

As reports about F1 racing legend Michael Schumacher suggest, it’s tragic that he finds himself where he is. Someone who defied death on the racing tracks has been felled, rather uncannily, off it. As he battles for his Life, there’s no better message for the coming year that I can think of than the one Michael always displayed on his helmet: “Life is about passions (sic!) – Thank You for sharing mine.” To be sure, Michael lived this message! He followed his passion, he followed his bliss!

With each passing year, you are drawing closer to your death. The only thing constant and predictable about Life is that it will end. So, there’s as much a responsibility that each of us has, as there is opportunity, to live this Life, that we have been given, fully! And your Life could not have been lived fully if you have not followed your bliss – if you have not done what you loved doing.

Many of us are so caught up with earning-a-living that we have not lived. There’s a gnawing pain within, a regret that gets only more pronounced with each passing year. Every birthday is a grim reminder that there is lesser time available. And then, when something tragic, like in Michael’s case, happens to us, we look back in regret – wondering if we could not have lived Life differently. If we could not have followed our dreams. While saying all this, I am not belittling the importance of keeping your economic engine running. Of course, each of us has a responsibility towards our families – to our parents, spouses, siblings and children. Providing for them requires reprioritization of Life’s To-Do lists and, of course, money. Therefore, I am not recommending that you focus only on yourself. I am only suggesting that let your selflessness not consume your passion, your inner joy, your bliss.

So, as you enter another year, as the festivities die down, pause and reflect on your Life. Ask yourself what would you have liked to have attempted doing in Life? Work on a plan that helps you maintain a balance between what you need to keep your income stream steady and what you need to do to keep you inner joy flowing. Execute that plan in 2014. Undoubtedly, as you get started, you will struggle. You will stumble. You will fall. But keep at it. And soon, you will have learned the art of living – fully, happily!

Make each moment, for the rest of your Life, memorable. “Live” them! For, you live only once! Because, ‘Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara’!

Wishing you and your precious family lots of love, peace and abundance all through 2014…