A Life to be LIVED

“Death is more universal than life; everyone dies but not everyone lives.” – Alan Sachs

We once had a Business Ethics professor, and quite a good one at that. While some of the case studies and conclusions that were discussed in her classes are still fresh in my memory, it’s her last session with us that really left an imprint on my mind.

It was a simple “thought experiment” conducted in a normal B-School Classroom setting. I am not sure what the definitive term for it is in the academia, or even if one exists. If any of you readers do come across any other published works on the same, please feel free to share.

It goes like this- you take a sheet of paper, and pen down your priorities in life, for scenarios that are listed out to you verbally (and sequentially). The scenarios are pretty much the same- you have been diagnosed with a terminal disease, the only variation is time you have left. You start with, say, a year left to live, and work down to a day and finally, the last minute.

I approached this exercise with much gusto. I found out that longer the amount of time available, the more grandiose the bucket list of priorities that I wanted to check off. All those things that I’ve always wanted to do- let’s just say the list could have gone on forever had the next scenario (with a lesser timeframe) not been thrown at me.

Now here’s the funny part, as the hypothetical time available boiled down to months, weeks and finally to the last day, and I realized that most of the things that I would have imagined were important or gave my life meaning were not really all that essential anymore. Forget me, I believe that anyone who approaches this exercise with event the least bit of seriousness will be able to get a better perspective on things that really matter in their lives.

Take this perspective, and see it through the lens of a simple objective reality: That life is a FINITE continuum. There’s ZERO guarantee on how long we will be on this earth. We are being scripted into a story where we don’t really get to choose where the Full Stop is placed.

This is why it makes sense to be “Happy” in the present, as opposed to chasing any form of “potential happiness” in the future, or reminiscing “past happiness” that will never feel the same again. There really is only the “NOW”, never a “TOMORROW”.

So “live” your life, NOW.

Cheers!

Dedicated to the loving memory of Manu, a dear friend and former colleague. Alas, for the cruel twists of fate, sometimes it is the very best among us that are the first to depart; without giving us the chance to say good bye. 

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