All of us have fears of different types. Some of those are known to us while many of the fears stay deep inside our psyche. We are afraid of death, the fundamental fear. These fears lead to many associated fears such as the fear of hunger, falling ill, fear of accidents, and fear of physical harm due to violence. A hungry baby looks forward to the mother for feeding and that is probably the reason why the fear of losing a mother is one of the biggest fears of a baby. As the baby grows, he sees that working parents support the family, and therefore the fear of losing parents grows inside them. As the kids grow further, they discover that money helps us survive. With money, we can have food and shelter to stay safe. With money, we can buy medical services if we grow ill. With money, we can have safer modes of communication and manage to stay safer. As we grow further, we realize that we need power and connections to stay safe, in a country where systems are not so well placed.
So, many of our life decisions are driven by the survival instinct. We keep forming associations, one after the other, almost the whole of our life. The more we acquire these safeguards the more fearful we become. Probably, in the process of acquisition, we become more and more dependent upon these accumulations for our survival. We have good food, but still, we want tastier food. Our taste buds become more and more choosy and we get into their grip to the extent that the slightest deviation from the taste can make us sad, angry, or aggressive. We have a home, and yet we want a bigger one and a more comfortable home. We take huge loans to buy a bigger home and spend the rest of our lives as a slave of the bank just working to repay the loan installments. We have money but we want more and more in our account and we are ready to give more and more time for our job.
Do we see an end to this race? Do we see what are we losing in the process? We are losing our precious time. Time is life. After all, it is the sum total of the moments we live, that we call life. Somebody will argue that why do you call it losing life. It is how everybody lives life. Yes, that is true so long as the purpose of life is just to stay safe. We can spend all our life to get tasty food and have multiple homes, money, and power. Some will argue that we have tasty food, comfortable homes, good money in our hands, and powers and positions. That is what life is. That gives us comfort and pleasure.
Does it really? What is comfort and pleasure? Isn't comfort just conforming to the habit patterns of the body and pleasure conforming to the habit patterns of the mind? We sit in a comfortable position and after some time, the same comfortable position becomes painful. Because the body is not used to sit in the same posture for a long time. Similarly, we feel pleased while listening to a song. Try listening to the same song in a loop a number of times and the very same song becomes irritating. What has turned comfort and pleasure into pain?
Can we just observe all these comforts and pleasures are just confirmations of our past habit patterns? Indians are more comfortable sitting cross-legged on the floor, while Westerners are more comfortable sitting in a chair since they have been brought up with different habit patterns. The people from north India feel pleasure while listening to Bollywood songs, while the people from the Western world feel pleased while listening to pop and rock. That's how we have acquired different habit patterns. So long as we conform to these habit patterns, we feel comfortable and pleasant.
Some will say that life is all about ambitions and not comfort and pleasure. If we examine closely, what these ambitions aim at, we will soon discover that all ambitions aim at certain future comforts and pleasures while sacrificing the present-day comforts and pleasures. In totality, either we live with a constant fear of survival live in the past driven by habit patterns constantly seeking comforts and pleasures, or live in the future driven by ambitions seeking future comforts and pleasures. In the process, do we ever live life?
I feel that it requires very little effort to survive and if we keep the efforts towards survival at a bare minimum, we are left with so much energy to explore life. Comforts and pleasures are just repetitions. Doing something again and again. Ambitions are just deferral of life. Wasting the vastness of the present moment for some imaginary comfort or pleasure. Life is all about living.
The moment we go back to the fundamental fear of death, we start examining the meaning of life. Life is the other side of death. The dead bodies make the soil and soil gives birth to life. Life is not possible without death. Howsoever one is afraid of death, one can not live forever. On the contrary, as soon as we understand that our existence is far beyond this body, the fear of death disappears. What dies is this body and we take another birth. We keep moving in different bodies in this world. That understanding gives us freedom and fills us with so much energy. As soon as we take our mind and energy away from the fear, and realize the temporariness of the comforts and pleasures, we have so much energy to explore the wonders of this world. We invest energy in exploring the physical world, relationships, fellow human beings, and forces of nature. Life becomes so beautiful.
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