Wednesday, May 12, 2021

Illness Should Teach Us Life Lessons

In our life, we take many things for granted. We assume that those things will continue in future and we do not need to make efforts to retain those. Taking some things for granted allows us to focus on fewer things, which improves our performance and leads to success. Think how difficult our life would be if we were to focus on everything or think, plan and work on 20 things at the same time, every day! So, while this habit allows us to succeed in our areas of interest, with time we forget that even though we do not need to actively work on some things, we should not take those for granted either!

A serious illness can act as a “wakeup call” for most of us. We realize that when we can’t even take our health “for granted”, what more certainties do we have in life?

“Loss of health can lead us to serious insecurities”

Every human mind is “wired” in a way where it will try to survive. And events of serious illness are the moments of “truth” where the conscious as well as subconscious minds must be on their best to fight the external ailment. But, especially if illness can prolong, one can be left wondering about one’s own safety and this can lead to feelings of insecurities in life. While some of this is natural and expected, too much of anything is not good. Therefore, we should try to avoid doing too much of worrying.

Most of us do not realize that good health is an outcome of our activities and ways of life. If we play by the rules, most of the time we are safe. If we violate the rules of nature, we are at risk. We may be saved by virtue of our good luck, but luck does not help same person all the time. If we realize that we are responsible for our health and we need to actively protect it, the battle is won.

Incidents of serious illness should lead us to “prioritize” things in our life. For example, if we were prioritizing our career over our family and an illness scar makes us realize that we were going to lose both career and family and “in the end”, our career and degrees won’t count, we shall be in for a shock. Times of illness are where we play by the “basic rules”. No amount of money can secure us proper health care, as we have seen time and again where celebrities and very rich people have also suffered because the healthcare professionals assigned to them did not do their duties right. A “family” can really make difference in such cases.

The other day I was watching a movie named “Rules Don’t Apply”. A big businessman avoided marrying late into his life and depended on hired employees for most of his work. But those employees could just “resign” and go away. Could he find trusted person every time? It is more difficult to find an honest person in this world, than discovering a goldmine.

We hope that the current situation of pandemic and bad news from all around also forces our society to think about its priorities as a whole. Were we valuing the right things? Should we have taken things for granted as we did and should we have prioritized material successes over human values? The answers are simple, but the trick is to sink those deep into our minds so that we never forget those.

Hope this crisis brings out something better in all of us and as a society, we become a better one with time.

सर्वे भवन्तु सुखिनः सर्वे सन्तु निरामयाः।

सर्वे भद्राणि पश्यन्तु मा कश्चिद्दुःखभाग् भवेत्।।

sarve bhavantu sukhina sarve santu nirāmayā|

sarve bhadrāi paśyantu mā kaściddukhabhāg bhavet||

“May all be happy; May all be free from infirmities; May all see good; May none partake suffering.”

- Rahul Tiwary


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