The finite runway of life..!

Among the many things that one cannot control..time, perhaps is the most valuable, for…its not coming back again. The realisation however starts to become more apparent as one grows in years for by that time one fact seems a certainty that there is a finite limit to human span of life in this world. What seemed to be an eternally long runway at the start.. to dream,discover,learn, experiment, engage, create what one considers a profile as well legacy for oneself….seems not enough for our ever evolving thoughts and our eventual destination.. This realisation is not new but always surfaces whenever one sits down to self reflect. Self reflection more often than not..always brings up our actions of the past. Our steps or missteps in tackling what life throws at us, our learnings, our perceived failures or what we thought were successes, our desires fulfilled or not …and more importantly our list still to be fulfilled with the ever ticking time pressure. Not a happy afternoon topic … when one just could be reflecting on one’s recent travel destination …or the one still on your pending list. However…good to delve on this for a while since our thoughts presently dictate so…

If one looks at the Wikipedia definition of time then- ‘Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, and into the future’. It is the measurement used for comparison both in material reality or in conscious experience. In short it is ever present but reflects a different level of material or conscious reality for every time period in its everchanging avatar. Self reflection at any point gives us a view to our past actions or choices which we all know are irreversible and perhaps indicative of the future which is yet to unfold. So whether we like it or not it really is a refrendum about the ‘Choices’ we have made in life. We call them choices but were they really so..? Many of the choices and the resultant actions come predetermined…for instance, nervous system autonomously regulates all the major processes taking place in your body, your brain operates by laws of physics and chemistry which are fixed, your genes are fixed at birth and cannot be changed and finally the results of one’s karma which will surface sometime.So..is this what we call ‘Choice’? Choice is usually when we have a free will to choose…which is seemingly absent if all actions done were pre decided or pre programmed!

This afternoon is turning out better than I had imagined for there are some quick realisations for its not the runway of ‘time’ which we are running short of but rather its our ability to choose the right subject matter as well as the timing…for the choices have already been made for us. We realise that we just have to live those choices that were made for us…either as part of our habits, our beliefs,old conditioning or our routine or past behaviour or as a result of our Karma and some of these reflect in what we now realize is unconscious behaviour and unconscious living. Where then is… ‘Free Will’..? A difficult question with no easy answers. Everything though does not have to be seen in the prism of absolutes like right or wrong, pleasure or pain or light vs dark for it is mind made and opposites too can coexist just like the duality we exist in as per Vedanta philosophy. Deepak Chopra (a renowned writer of life philosophy) article writes that Free Will…. ‘it becomes real when we take steps to undo our unconscious behaviour’.The only step required for that is to ‘stop,pause,and hang loose’. So even if there is no ability for physical choice, a Stop and a Pause creates the beginnings of a choice to stop a behaviour which is not working..and hang loose allows for considering new options for a fresh response to replace the automatic reflex one would have given based on what one is conditioned to… Free will is therefore more connected to our conscious choice of resultant behaviour on the choices already decided and given to us..

These thoughts have somehow fallen into place as the self reflection session progressed. As I said earlier it’s not the time that one needs to fear, but rather the clear understanding of the thoughts for an appropriate behavioural response ….to quote the article once again – ‘Human behaviour exists in a fog and the important thing is to dissipate the fog, not stumble forward as best as we can which is what everybody does..’ Hope you find this an interesting take on some difficult concepts.

Will be back to the travel section again in the next instalment…but till then enjoy reading this ..though I admit it’s a little complex.