What did you Expect?
So what did you expect? To remain young? What is the true meaning of life?
Every now and then we think back and realize it was just ‘yesterday’ that I graduated from high-school or it was only yesterday that I bought my first bicycle or it was only recently that I met my life partner. And then we reminisce and wish we were still living in the past. What did we expect? That we are going to live forever? Perhaps we should start teaching and educating our children about how short life is and that in a very short while we’ll be on our way out leaving room for our descendants to take over. Yes we will be forgotten and yes it will be like we’ve never existed. Believe it! There’s no escape to this fact. Your immediate family members may remember you but they soon will die too. So you can rest assured there’s nothing you can do today that’s going make you immortal. Nothing!
So what can you do when you surrender to this reality? I really don’t know the answer but I can guess. I found the truth lies in our relationships and dealing with other people – strange or familiar. Even though that won’t really call for immortality but what it provides is satisfaction with oneself. Nothing worse than self-induced pain and guilt about one’s own actions and accomplishments. When you dedicate your life towards improving other people’s lives, you feel this sense of inner satisfaction. The sense that you’ve made some contribution to this world and that contribution may pass on to the next generation. You’ve left traces of yourself inside others and you’ve not stopped making memories of your actions. This is what lasts and this is what continues to live on forever. I don’t want to be remembered, enshrined, or recorded somewhere on the history books. All we need is to gain our self-satisfaction from our contribution to others. This really is what matters. It’s not the success, the riches, the career, or anything ‘worthless’ in this life time for this matter. It’s all spiritual and it’s all self-gained.
If you don’t focus on others and what you can do to help them in any means possible, then you’re only chasing after worthless dreams. Dreams that even when transformed to reality – are only short-lived. Our aspirations must come from our inner want and longing for self-attainment. If we value ourselves and value the meaning of our life, we realize it’s really not about what we accomplish for ourselves. It’s about what we do for the entire community . It’s about what we carry out that affects other people’s’ lives positively.
When you’re on your deathbed thinking about these accomplishments and what you leave behind in aspirations for others, you realize this is all that really matters. It’s all spiritual and the gurus have said it right: nothing physical matters – it’s all in your spiritual accomplishments.