Every year, our Earth takes us on a trip around the Sun which is called ‘Revolution in 365 days.’ Thousands before us have breathed, lived and left this world to be heard of no more. I borrow the experiences of the dead that they have left behind, as I feel, it may have some good influence on existing human beings who struggle for gainful existence, before they attain the blissful silence.
Experience of ‘Quality of life’, we see in the reaction of two sons of a drunkard who lived in a single room. The elder son concentrated on his studies because he was determined to be different from his father. He got an award for excellence as a citizen of the town. The younger son followed in father’s footsteps and was imprisoned for a petty crime.
Here, the situation was the same, and the response, different. It is our response — our inner self-talk; that determines ‘Quality’ of life.
Here is an experience of Poet Milton. His wife always nagged him saying: “Every day you go for a walk, but what do you seek to gain from this? You can’t even see properly now.” Milton replied, “Birds sing, winds play and caress me. I go to see that beauty.” His wife said, “But you don’t have vision. How can you see beauty?” Milton replied, “Beauty is not seen with external eyes. The eyes that see beauty are within us.”
Similarly, to see how calm or the state of our mind in adverse circumstances, we don’t need external eyes but internal eyes to control our temper.
Experience of importance of everything existing in nature is explained by Emerson in his poem with reference to a quarrel between a mountain and a little squirrel as: “If I am not as large as you, / You are not so small as I / Talents differ; / all is well and wisely put. / If I cannot carry forest on my back, / Neither can you crack a nut.”
Everything and everyone has a role to play in the plan of God. As the squirrel observed, “All is well and wisely put”. The poem suggests that there should not be any sense of pride over our position in life, the talents we possess, or the nature of work we do; one should not suffer from the sense of inferiority, with a narrow picture of self.
“Life turns sour; if we ignore survival plan for future success which are within our power.” We see this from the experience of a scholar who was being ferried by a boatman. The scholar asked the boatman whether he had any bookish knowledge of this and that. And the boatman said, “No”. So, the scholar said, that he (boatman), wasted his life learning nothing that is found in books. Suddenly, a storm came and the boat was about to sink; the boatman asked the learned scholar, “Do you know to swim?” The scholar said, “No.” The boatman before jumping into the river to save his life by swimming to the shore he (boatman) said to the scholar, “Your life is a waste because you have vast knowledge but you have ignored survival plans.”
The experience of those poisonous-minded persons, who push their competitor down the platform of success, just to pitch themselves high is explained in the song, “Sorpachea Kastache” by Navel Pereira on the internet.
Life is an experience on this journey around the sun not by sitting like observers before the idiot box— TV; but actively choosing the good and rejecting the bad.
