Memoirs of GB Episode 91: When Life halts in the Pitstop

Few years back, I believe it was 2016 after few minutes of boarding my Emirates flight from Dubai to Hyderabad, India I fainted due to exhaustion and severe throat infection.?Blame it on long travel from US and not taking enough cold water normally offered in flight. There was a panic in the flight and my co-passenger started screaming that I was almost dead, and he wanted my mortal remains to be removed from his side, some started praying for my soul to rest in peace. Jokes apart, after few minutes of some first aid by the flight attendant team and seasoned physiotherapist, I was back to normal breathing. That moment I realized how vulnerable life was.?Moment of Truth is. be prepared and be at peace even if you have to leave this world at any moment.

Coming back home I added my wife as nominee in all my financial products and then after a year I have written a?Will document?covering all my assets.?Last year I and my spouse worked on creating a sustainable income source for her through a business venture where she has the potential to learn and grow her business; Now she is self-reliant and much more confident than ever before.

Our life gets into rhythm and we forget to do what is essential and priority in life , We get so busy in our professional life and we fail to pay attention to important lessons of life. Once there was a scientist who was studying behaviour of caterpillars. He took a flowerpot and placed a number of caterpillars in single-file around the circumference of the pot's rim. Each caterpillar's head touched the caterpillar in front of it. He then placed the caterpillars' favourite food in the middle of the circle created by the caterpillars' procession around the rim of the flowerpot.

Each caterpillar followed the one ahead thinking that it was heading for the food. Round and round went those caterpillars for seven days! After a week of this mindless activity, the caterpillars started to drop dead because of exhaustion and starvation. All that they had to do to avoid death was to stop the senseless circling of the flowerpot and head directly toward the food-less than six inches away from those ever-circling crawlers. However, these caterpillars were locked into this lifestyle and couldn't move themselves from this mindless behaviour.

Lessons from this story

Human beings are different from caterpillars. We alone have the ability to change our direction in life. Or do we? We often confuse activity with achievement. We get into different forms of stress if we do not act with awareness. The mess can become vicious circles, which don't get us any further than these caterpillar gets on the flowerpot. Then we find ourselves resembling the processionary caterpillar more than we would first think or want. If you fear that you share some of the style of the processionary caterpillar, you have the *Power of choice* that you can break out of this behaviour.?

The choice to steer our life towards a more meaningful way of living without ignoring the fundamentals of our living.?When life comes to a halt in pitstop, its time to course correct but don’t wait for the Pitstop, very few and some are lucky to come out of the pitstop and resume their life as normal.

We never know when is our D-Day but you always know you can do something better today.?

?

Godspeed

Dinesh Chandrasekar DC*

P.S: All views expressed here are my personal views and opinion and have no bearing to the organization I work