Life is a full circle

 

Life is a full circle.

I feel like whatever we do ultimately prepares us for something that is yet to come; take for example your school curriculum, whatever you are taught each day ultimately appears on the test paper.

The same happens for life as well. The only difference is that we don’t know the syllabus. We keep on reading, writing may be the doing part, all that happens to us is a test or maybe a preparation of it.

A story that highlights this phenomenon is of the great warrior prince of Yemen: Hatim.

The brother of the princess Hatim is in love with is under a curse to be molded in stone; given by a demon. To kill the demon, Hatim has to answer 7 questions/ riddles. Each answer weakens the demon and releases a part of his body from the curse.

The quest for answers forces him on an incredible journey. Every step of the journey puts a test in front of him and he has to use his morals and intellect to get ahead. Interestingly, all the previous milestones and people he met advise him or teach him valuable lessons. Which he applies to save his life and many others who are troubled.

Our lives are a quest as well, we don’t know the questions yet, we still are moving ahead, learning and using our morals and intellect to reach a milestone. We too find valuable nuggets of wisdom and advice from people we meet in our journey, we too get to experience the ecstasy of the chase, the thrill of slaying the dragon, and wounds that turn into scars.

Our lives are shaped by the decisions we make.

What can we do?

Well, the answer is the most cliched of all, i.e., live in the moment, be mindful, live to the fullest, and something like. Often, we forget that these are cliches for a reason. It's because they are true. We should be mindful of what is happening to us we are supposed to in sync with our body.

Tim Ferris has this method of making correct decisions all the time. He calls it the mind heart and gut sense.

Whenever you need to make a decision, or you have to answer someone about something, just focus on your senses, if your body agrees with you, the answer will be eminent.

If your mind disagrees you will know it since the rational mind will take care of the pros/cons of the decision. If your heart disagrees then you will feel a sudden rise in your heart rate. If the gut disagrees you have a chill sensation, or you will feel your gut squeezing.

That is how you will know somewhere the body disagrees with the decision and you at least need some time before you answer.

Being mindful is not a tough act, you just need to lower down the distractions and the noise that has become your chorus in the meantime. I am not kidding; the noise and our daily bad habits have become so common that they rarely seem like bad habits to us.

I am talking about walking with headphones blaring in our ears, eating with the TV on, or a smartphone in our hand, always wanting to do something, mostly with an electronic.

The apps on our phones and electronics are designed to keep us hooked. They need our eyeballs staring at the screen all the time. And elaborating on that, you could find your own vices that keep you from being mindful.

The best strategy is to meditate. But I understand that is not for all. But at least you could lower down your stimulations and find peace with yourself.

Back in the day when even the radio was not common, the people used to gather and share stories, their experience, read an actual book, do something they love, now they just watch other people do stuff and compare themselves and feel bad.

The first step is to clear out the noise, the stimulants, and the stuff that keeps us in illusion. I used to wonder how people spent their time before technology. And the answer was with each other! The tech has allowed us to ignore all crap of the real world and maybe focus on the stuff we actually care about.

I can get all the latest gossips, the hottest porn, the secret sauce, or potentially any web series or TV show I want. And I also can get the best advice from someone who was in my shoes once, learn about and from the greatest generations of all time, write and reach millions of people online.

The choice is mine and that’s all that matters. All the knowledge we gather now is what we will use later in life. As it’s said that life is a full circle.