Life is fragile, treasure it well

I was standing on a cliff edge, looking down. The ocean waves were rolling in wildly and there was a stiff wind against my face. It was quite scary looking down at the roaring waves and the killer breeze that would even fly me away I thought. I remember gazing down and seeing the distance from the top of the precipice to the bottom. It must have been 50 metres or so. I wasn’t suicidal or even depressed, but I remember thinking all it would take for me to end my life would be to take a step forward and experience the ultimate unknown...death!

What would it take for me to do that? I thought to myself. On reflection I’m certain I would never done it. But at the time I felt almost tempted, compelled. I still can’t help but wonder how I would have needed to feel in order to take that last step and face the supreme mystery. What it would have taken for me to face death; that quintessence of finality. That’s how fragile life can be; just a single step.

Another recent experience to tell you. Yesterday I was at a shopping mall with my wife. We were busy in our casual talks while approaching an escalator going downwards. Another family was behind us. In that family, there were few kids who were playing with each other, running around and doing all those kiddish things as normal kids would do. I was some 5–6 feet from the escalator when one of the smaller kids around 3 years of age suddenly became ecstatic seeing the moving staircase and rushed towards it. Before anyone could move, the kid toppled on the uppermost stair and was about to fall down.

Everything appeared in slow motion and suddenly I felt some electric current inside me and in an instant, I leaped and got hold of the falling kid before it could hit the iron stairs. Within a few milliseconds, all this happened, I went on my way, the family theirs. Life is so fragile we realised, it still gives me goosebumps thinking of the fate of the falling kid. But if we focus on one word from my last line, “milliseconds”. What if I was only a few milliseconds late. After all it was just a matter of milliseconds, this side or that.

Life can be fragile or rock-hard depending on what you identify yourself with. Say, you identify yourself with your body and mind. Your life is like an ant under a combat boot. The soldier steps on you, then, good-bye. If you are lucky, then, you got a few more days but — at the end of the day — the same result with being squeezed under the boot. You end up either in cemetery or in ashes, which is guaranteed. Oh, boy, isn’t this fragile. Whatever achievement, wealth, health, love of your life you have got and enjoyed, you will be gone. Your life is not just fragile, it’s also ephemeral. It’s pathetic. Simply put, life sucks.

Now, say, you identify yourself with the pure awareness out of which all existence came forth. Then, time stops. There is no space for you to reside as you are the source. You don’t see rain dropping as you are the rain. You don’t smell flowers as you are the scent. You don’t feel the breeze as you are the wind. You were never born, will never die. You never live. You just are there. You are the screen on to which all stories are projected. Whatever the story was, the screen remains as life is a dream in your awareness. Life as you see it, is a fragile, ephemeral dream. Who are you to begin with?

Life is the way we live it. He who’ve lived it with conviction and confidence can seldom find life fragile. We all have a purpose on this planet, we perform it or not is strictly a whole another chapter. Our denial on the purpose of this life can indeed make us encounter with the nerve of insignificance, crestfallen and vexation. Let alone our life, nothing in this world is fragile and insignificant. Everything, including this life is tough, adept and ready in its own way. On a broader picture, yes, true that we are only a droplet from an infinite ocean, but we includes to what it takes to be an ocean. Nutshell: We may be tiny but never insignificant. Life with a purpose can never be fragile. Keep asking, keep teaching, keep learning. Cheers!