Joy in Life

Ancient Egyptians used to believe that when you die, you are asked two questions at the gates of Heaven ... your answer determines whether you would admitted inside the gates or not...

1. Have you found JOY in your life?

2. Has your life bought JOY to others?

These questions popped up in the movie The Bucket List which I had longed to watch. It is a story of two old men (starring Morgan Freeman, Jack Nicholson) who have terminal cancer. While sharing the same hospital room, they create a bucket list of things they want to do before they die and they do it. In the process, they heal each other and become friends and ultimately find the joy in life.

Not that I am a serious follower of the Egyptian practices and rituals for preparing oneself for death and afterlife but I found these questions interesting .... More importantly, they made me think about the way I live and how I reciprocate.

These questions go hand in hand and in the right order in which I have written them. How is it possible to bring joy in someone else's lives when you don't have joy in your own lives? You can't give what you don't have.. isn't it? You can fake it ... yes... but what the heck you would finally get out of it? I decided to ask these questions to myself last night.

"Arihant, Have you found joy in your life?"

Arihant, "I have had a joyous life so far. My attachment to my parents, siblings, best friends have given me the feeling of being complete and motivated. There is no better joy than being with the people who love you because it is really tough to meet people who love you. My answer would be rather mixed here as I cannot say that I found total joy in everything that I have done but I want to save you from the trouble of reading all that. At the percentage level, the see-saw tilts towards YES :) "

"Arihant, Has your life bought joy to others?"

Arihant, "I can say YES I HAVE but the best way to find this out for sure is to survey those in my life i.e. parents, sisters, best friends etc. I think I have made a joyful noise in the life of everyone, okay, almost everyone. There were/are times when the joy of the Lord has fell really far away from me and like I said when you don't have it to give..."

But at this point of my life & at this moment, I say YES I have joy and the essence of my joy has left its footprints on the souls, hearts and lives of people who know me the way I am and I so much want to continue doing it for the rest of my life :)

World is changing

Apni marzi se kahan apne safar ke hum hain,

Rukh hawaon ka jidhar ka tha, udhar ke hum hain,

Pehle harr cheez thi apni, magar ab lagta hain,

Apne hi ghar main, kisi dusre ghar ke hum hain

This ghazal is so relevant for me at this point of time. Thanks to Jagjit Singh for singing this for me at odd hours at night …

I want to make the world a better place… Err… I am talking about my very own personal world… so many sleepless nights have passed and I am still not at peace. I am doing things which I don’t intend to, I am walking the paths which lead me somewhere; I don’t know where. I keep forgetting things but remember the ones which have pinched me hard in life. It gives me a lot of exasperation and fright. My mind is in lot of indecision right now.

Ranj aur dard ki basti ka main baashinda hun

Yeh to buss main hun ki iss haal main zinda hun

Khwaab woh dekhta hun jiss par main sharminda hun

Some times I just wish God would have invented some medicine, which I could just gulp once and it can erase all the bad memories from my past. It would make you recall only the good reminiscences; I would be more cheerful and less worried then. At least, I would be able to live my present. I will not have to lose sleep on lost love, awful accidents, heartbreaking demises, professional dissatisfactions blah blah blah

But not everything is in our control; only our life is. No one can snatch it from you till you voluntarily give it to someone or let others control you… If I can learn and adapt this, I guess this is what would make me strong and determined… I think of ways to control my life… I think of living my life again to the fullest; with my old forgotten buddies, with my family, with the people who care for me.

I will survive. My world will change.