We all try to create a lot of security for ourselves. These various forms of security i.e. emotional, social and personal are needed in anticipation of contingency in the future. But the most sought after security that we all chase is the financial security. The struggle for this security starts right from our childhood. Your parents scolded you for scoring low marks even in one small unit test. That scolding is due to the fear that if you do not study well, you may not make much money when you grow up. You chased seats in Engineering or Medical Colleges for that financial security only. You are under constant stress, in the prime years of your life for this only. All this is planning for the future, to gain that elusive financial security. Little do you understand at that time is that “this struggle for security” is actually never going to end.
There is always a next step in life. The next step maybe the best MBA programme. The next being the best paying job. The next is the race to go to US and earn in dollars to make money grow faster in your bank account. The next maybe is to get married and build a big house. Then one more house from the objective of investment. Next comes planning for your old age and retirement. Where do you actually stop?
In order to create this security, we always live in an atmosphere of fear. When you are in school or college, you fear the tests and results, never enjoy the learning and education. When you are working, this feeling of scarcity and fear is always there. This insecurity and fear becomes a constant phenomenon. It stays with us for our entire lives, and in wake of security for future; for which we keep destroying our present, which we thought would be the bright future.
Then there are other securities which we chase, like emotional and social security. We like to have a status in society, among the peer group, about which we discussed the first chapter. For the emotional security we chase love, a partner to share our emotions.
But while chasing all these securities, we always stay insecure. We develop constant insecurities in our mind. We are insecure all the time, and as we keep going we keep developing newer areas of insecurity. Please understand one thing here, and consider this as a law. The law is something which is there and may not have a base, but since it is law, it has to be followed. So the law here is “Insecurity is a state of mind, It has nothing to with your actual situation”.
Now in order to overcome the fear and insecurities, we keep running for our entire lives. Most of the people don’t ever question the logic of the system they live in, be it job or at home.
But what most of the people don’t realize that losing a job, scoring low marks or losing your love is not the most valuable things for which we plan and try to secure them, the most uncertain thing in life is life itself.
People tolerate all kind of atrocities in the office to keep themselves in the job thinking that this would give them financial security in old age. We pressurize our children to study hard and score very high marks. Under this study pressure, the children don’t have time for other things like sports and general entertainment. This kills their confidence and individuality from inside. Sometimes this pressure is so high that children commit suicide in fear of scoring low marks immediately after an exam in which they haven’t done very well.
Are we sure that we will be alive tomorrow? You can protect yourself in the best possible manner. You can hire the best of security guards, build up the best of cars with all safety equipments, get the best driver in town to drive you through but the risk can only be mitigated. One of those security guards can turn into a traitor and kill you with his own hands. You have the best car and the best driver but all the people on road are not like that. Your driver in the best car could drive in the best possible manner but a drunken driver on a lorry can still send you to the almighty with a slightest hit. A hurricane Katrina or Tsunami can catch you unawares.
Here is a true story to illustrate this issue. There was a boy from a middle class background with his father working in a government organization in India. After high school, he went to a big public school for higher secondary. As he was studying on a scholarship in that school, he used to see a lot of students from very rich families. Those students used to enjoy a lot of luxuries in life of which he could only dream of those days. He made it a point that he has to enjoy all these luxuries in life. From that day, his life changed completely. He studied 8 hrs a day after school to clear Joint entrance examination for Indian institutes of Technology. He cleared it easily and went to IIT. There also, he studied day and night for four years topping in his branch. Like most students, he gave Common entrance test and joined Indian Institute of Management. Again, toil of two years finally got him a job with one of the leading investment banks on the Wall Street. He was really happy that 8 years of sacrifice is finally going to pay off. He reached New York, and started working, one fine day he got the news that his brother had died in a road accident. He wanted to go back for few days, his employers disallowed, at the end; he quit the job and went for cremation of his brother. Now he had not talked much with his brother in those eight years, the whole dream broke down for him. He didn’t understand what he was chasing and he got into deep depression thereafter.
Now think for a while, you must be knowing someone around you who has died an untimely death. You must have gone to the funeral ground sometime in your life. How in those one or two hours, you lose all your stress of life. But as soon as you are out within two hours you are back to your hell. So the point is we think we are never going to die.
The above story is one of the biggest motivations for the authors to take up this challenge to write this book. Now everyone understands the moral of the story, which is the title of the chapter, the most uncertain thing in life is the life itself. As per famous quote of Beatles lead singer John Lennon:
“Life is what happens to you, when you are planning other things”
Ironically, John was himself shot by a crazy fan, at a mere age of 40, at the peak of his career. What do we learn from all these examples, with due regard to the ambitions and the inspirations for a better future, never get your present affected by them. There are million such examples you will find but learning from that maybe very little. Actually we have lost the art of living life in a fearless and free manner. Think about the activities which you have undertaken, which gave you no financial or material benefit. Make no mistake, we are not talking about charity, we are taking about the things which you used to do when you were young. Today, actions like going to park, sitting with friends, sports and so on look like waste of time.
You may say I still meet friends, go to park and take a walk. But now you are reducing your weight or meeting up friends for a crib session. Things are not the same, the point is, and today you even plan your sleeping hours. If you sleep an extra hour, the first thing that comes in your mind is that one hour got wasted. But why is this important? This is important as life is uncertain, so the joy of today cannot be completely sacrificed for plans of tomorrow.
Here is a mythological story if you feel otherwise. This story is from the Mahabharata. During the Vanvas(stay in jungle) of the pandavas, a beggar came to Yudhishter asking for some clothes. Samrat Yudhishter was busy so he asked the beggar to come the next day. The younger brother of Yudhishter, Bhim overheard this. Bhim set out to a village nearby, blowing a drum, singing and dancing in joy. People were amazed to see him doing this, so someone asked him “what is the matter”. Bhim told him that, “Now, I am the brother of a god as Yudhishter has just become one”. After a couple of hours, this reached Yudhishter that Bhim is claiming that my eldest brother has become god.
Yudhishter called Bhim and asked for the explanation. Bhim told him,
“You promised the beggar to come and take the clothes from you tomorrow, which means you are sure that you will be alive tomorrow. I am not very intelligent like you but I know only God knows who will be alive tomorrow. I thus interpreted that you have become God, which is why I was so happy.”
Yudhishter got the message from Bhim and we hope you all will also get the same.
There are so many stimuli every day in life, which we fail to acknowledge as we are busy planning tomorrow. We prioritize things as “important and not important”. We feel playing with kid can happen later, we feel that we can watch movies when we are settled, the best of all, we can get married only when we make a certain amount of money. Even if that takes me over 30-35 years of age.
Now the question, does it mean we should not plan at all and live for today only. But are we anywhere near there, all we are doing in life today is planning, planning and more planning. We are planning of 20-30 years and we not even sure of next 20-30 minutes. Whatever said and done, death is a certainty and the timing of it is uncertain. This is the biggest problem, for an unlimited life, all the planning is fine, but with the death being a fact, all plans are waste.
Here a modern day incident, which happened in August, 2007, which illustrates the same fact. Here is the news clipping of the incident:
8 –LANE BRIDGE FALLS INTO MISSISSIPPI RIVER
A 40-year-old interstate bridge over the Mississippi river in Minneapolis, US, collapsed on Wednesday during the evening rush hour, killing at least 11 people and leaving over 20 missing. Three of the four sections of the 8-lane bridge buckled and fell into the water and onto a freight train.
Officials said the bridge had been given a clean bill of health three years back. An earlier 2001 evaluation reported that there were preliminary signs of fatigue on the steel truss section under the roadway, but no cracking. There was no need for the transportation department to replace the bridge because of fatigue cracking.
We choose to give this example whereas there are hundred such incidences occurring every month in India. The reason is that America boasts of being the most advanced nation with safest and finest infrastructure. But all these safety measures taken by human are nothing against the wishes of the almighty.
The point is that when the tomorrow is so uncertain, why live your life for it. Many people commit the mistake of leaving a lot of good things to do for the future. But that future never comes. There is a lot of stuff that you can’t do today but there is a lot that you can. All of us have some responsibilities, some commitments to fulfill but we are not sure if we can spare two minutes to just stand up and give clothes to a needy person. The point is, there are so many small and little things we can do everyday that would give us immense pleasure. We leave all of them to get something really big but we might not be alive by that time.
So do not leave everything for the future. We are living in present and let us try to make it as beautiful as possible. Let us do things that we like right now rather than waiting for the right time to come.
Some of us are in this trap of not knowing what we want in life. Basically, most of us want everything in life. We want great and successful careers that too in minimal of time. We also want to have an enjoyable family life. We want to contribute to the social causes also and we always want to help our friends in need.
We want to attend religious and social functions as well as kid’s parent teacher’s meetings. But just think, is all that possible in a day of 24 hours? Some of us are god gifted and maybe able to manage this. But the percentage of these people would be less than 0.1%. So what about other 99.9%??? We want to do everything; we have passion to do everything, we have skill to do everything but not the time.
So, we need to lay down our priorities among these. The priorities that fit me as an individual, not my peer group, not of my father and so on. Actually we are chasing a perfect life, and want everything in life. This strange conquest takes us nowhere and to attain peace of mind, we read spiritual books, attend yoga camps and so on. But we will never understand the simple concept of life, we just want another gimmick for ourselves. First we make our lives complicated, then we look at complicated solutions. Now the solution is simple, and can actually be written in one page. But we have written 100 pages of this book to give that solution in order that you are able to comprehend it.
But you can read tons of bulky and complicated literature, wherein all these conclusions have been achieved with complicated stories and measures. The solution is simple and straight, and very objective. Know the facts, like the ones we have discussed in all these chapters, in the most objective manner possible.
You may say, yes I live for my family and I am working 100 hours a week for my family. But is that what you want or your family wants? If you travel 15 days a month, does you wife and kid want that? If you never enjoyed movies, sports and other things, while you were preparing for entrance tests, and now you don’t enjoy it anymore, since the age has passed, who is to blame?
Therefore, please understand and appreciate the invaluable things in life. These are your family, parents, children, your own health, your five favorite passions and above all your own life. Take good care of these and always put them on high priority. Rest all are materialistic things which are good to have but not at a cost of these things. But are you doing this? This is the question which you need to answer yourself.
The last and one of the most important part, If you think you are going to make this change in your life, when are you going to do it ? You need to do it now!! There is no tomorrow here, that’s the essence of the entire story. Whatever you need to do, do it now! Or at least do a fair percentage of it now, don’t do 100% of what you want but stay in the horizon, achieve 80-90% of it now.
So, enjoy your life to the fullest, live like the CEO of your life, each moment is your choice, you are the owner of this universe, it will be the way you like it to be. Since you see it with your own eyes and interpret it with your own brain. You are the ultimate, and you control everything.
This is being the CEO of your life!
The Chapter is taken from the book, 'Be the CEO of Your Life' written by Sandeep Amar and I. You can buy it online at
http://www.flipkart.com/ceo-your-life-amar-book-8184120942
