As a child I was often told by elders that we keep learning all the time till we die. How incredulous it sounded then? How can grownups, who know everything, speak like this? But then, now I read that we come in this world only to learn. As an imperfect human being and a learner myself, I have no intention of getting into the spiritual domain. On the contrary I feel the inadequacy of the current education system, which though much evolved, teaches many sophisticated subjects except ‘how to live life’. This is where I feel that the ancient ‘Guru-Shishya parampara’ was more suitable.

When I was a child I always had small goals like getting good marks in exams, getting a rank in the class, coming first in a race etc. While we enjoyed and played and had fun, including watching movies sitting in ‘box’ of the theaters then, these goals were always present in our lives. The first big goal came when I was in class 10th. My first board exam. I was told that this is make or break exam. If we get good marks our life becomes very good after that. I studied hard for that. Got decent marks too. But then suddenly I realized that life didn’t become any easier. I was immediately thereafter preparing for the next board exam of class 12th and competitive exams. Once more, idea was that if we get good marks and get selected in a good engineering institute the life was made. Alas! I got selected too. But instead of dream world, I saw ‘ragging’ in my college – which I enjoy now in the retrospect. Soon enough I realized that not only technical subjects were not my cup of tea, life after pure engineering is not something we can call dream world. So again a new preparation started – to get into a good MBA institute. It was quite tough since I was coming from Hindi speaking milieu where no one had heard about MBA then and also the private jobs were like being working as a ‘Naukar’ to some ‘Malik’. What I realized much later is that there is no destination in life after which we reach dream world, except in dreams only.

The reason I decided to write my thoughts is that no one told me that there are only two destinations in life – of being born in this world and leaving this world with death. That also all alone. In between it is only a journey, journey of life, journey of Karma, journey of learning, journey of pleasures, journey of sorrows, journey of successes, journey of failures, journey of companionship, love, hate, separation etc. This is a journey where no success is final and permanent and so is no failure, which is final and permanent.

Which means that while living this life our first and foremost objective should be to live this life, enjoy the journey with all its pains and pleasures, without linking our happiness and pleasures with some objective after achieving which we believe we will remain happy. The way we are composed as a society, we are perpetually trying to find happiness in material things and certain events around us. It is rare when we see someone preparing the next generation mentally to expect happiness and sorrows both as a part of this journey called life. It is almost as if sorrows strike the neighbours only, till one fine day they catch up with us. When they actually do, more often than not, we are not mentally prepared. Then a syndrome starts when we start quarreling with God, cursing our fate, start thinking of ourselves as victims and make our already difficult lives more miserable. When we see a child trying to walk or cycling for the first time fall, we say that these are pangs of growth. But when we as adults go through our own ‘fall’ in our growth as human beings we behave entirely in a different way. We completely forget the basics that we are bound fall sometimes in life & get injured – meaning that sorrows are part of growth plan, there can be no happiness without sorrows, no day without night, no summer without winter. All this happens because we were never prepared mentally to handle successes or sorrows. What we are conditioned is to chase some goals that will lead to happiness and that sorrows afflict only the neighbours. So when successes come we become arrogant and assume that to be permanent and when sorrows strike we go through depression – without for a moment thinking that this is the journey of life having only two destination points, birth and death, in between which it is just a journey which will give all flavours of life, some more and some less.

I often compare life significantly with a long road journey in a car, let’s say between Srinagar and Kanyakumari. Many people start the journey in their own cars and at various times. Right from the start we see someone having a smooth ride, someone’s car breaking down, someone falling in a ditch, having a flat tyre, loss of air-conditioning, sometime we crashing our car into another due to our stupidity and sometime someone is crashing into us for no mistake of ours. Sometime, we get a companion who makes are journey a pleasure and sometimes he robs us. Sometimes this companion is with us for a short distance and sometime for a long distance. There are some drivers who are constantly thinking of reaching the next town, tense, holding steering wheel tight, eyes fixed on the road, foot on the accelerator & brakes, in a hurry to reach the destination faster. They not only don’t enjoy the journey, but as soon as they reach the next town, their mind starts working on the next leg of the journey. On the other hand there is another driver, who is mentally relaxed but conscious of the journey, watching streams, rivers, trees, roads, many different cultures on the way, stops by and chats with local people, enjoys eating various cuisines on the way. If there’s a breakdown he doesn’t get worked up but while the car is getting repaired he relaxes and has more fun, whereas the other driver frets, fumes and gets angry when the car is getting repaired. Eventually, both reach their destinations. The first one actually end up reaching Kanyakumari whereas the second one meets with an accident much before, for no fault of his and ends his journey. Now we have two drivers. One, who travelled more and for a longer time but was tense all along and realized that he hadn’t observed anything on the way, enjoyed or learnt and the journey got over, with deep regrets. Second, who travelled shorter distance, enjoyed the journey, learnt about various cultures, cuisines, places and made many good friends and when he met with an accident there were no regrets. On the contrary, there were many of his friends present there when he completed his journey.

My little thought of life in this context is that it is essential for us to condition our mind in such a way that not only us but the coming generations treat life as a journey, enjoy it in all situations, learn from it and when faced with challenges consider them as essential part of this life journey rather than chasing the mirage of multiple destination points which hold the key to our happiness or sorrows. As the car driver would know, that there are only two destinations – start and finish, with every town in between just a place to rest & recuperate before commencing the journey further ahead.