Life is like the old ringing telephone.
We survey it as if we can perceive the caller by clairvoyance. Even so, all we can do is pick up the receiver and anticipate. It could be a disquieting news, a rapturous announcement or an infuriating promotion call.
Life is more than breathing. Life is more than the antonym of death. Life is more than a topic in biology. It is concrete yet abstract.
I appreciated the true meaning of life when I met a minuscule, trembling life. My sister had rescued a baby squirrel not more than 2 weeks old. She was a terror-struck, hairless baby with pink dapples and a palpitating heart. She enlightened us with adoration and appreciation, euphoria and empathy, gratitude and gutsiness, hope and harmony, love and liveliness, and passion and peace. Those emotions were life, she became our life.
The tacit definition of (a successful) life was good grades and exceptional beauty followed by a lucrative job and conceivably, fame. It was an onerous task and a life lived only by the assiduous few and hence satisfaction always seemed distant. Since I knew I couldn’t achieve it all, I stopped trying. Why study when you can’t ever get a perfect score? Meeting Kuku not only changed my outlook towards life but also taught me fulfillment. Looking at her twitching her whiskers, scratching her back and pleading for a belly rub was exhilarating. Imagine how terrifying falling out of a tree and being sniffed for by every dog in the area is. Still she adapted to our human way of living, trusted us and slept soundly, relished every crumb of any human food she could get her hands on and spread gaiety and tenderness.
Until that point I always felt life was an isolated concept, that my life revolved around me, little did I know that the 6 inch baby is going to refute this hypothesis. Every life is an entity, yet living its life concurrently. Every interaction with any other living entity is a subset of our life, it fills our life cavities. After this insight I started cherishing those cavities of my life which emboldened me to pursue the true meaning of life. After scrutinizing my life sphere I culminated that life is enigmatic. Taking care of Kuku gave me contentment, feeding the birds gave me fulfillment, gazing at an army of ants picking up food scraps gave me optimism and watering the plants filled me with pride. Every pursuit of the day was illuminating when undertaken with sincerity, integrity, curiosity and enthusiasm. Hence, to make my life tree momentous, all the small but significant life leaves need to be robust.
Love is to life like salt is to food. Empathy and love can help in nurturing the lives around us. To revitalize my life I’ve distributed my socializing time equally between animals, humans and plants. Two days are dedicated to sharing a meal with an orphanage or old age home, helping younger kids with their homework, greeting and chatting with my grandparents, volunteering in community service or taking up any activity at random where the motive is spending time with humans constructively. Similarly two more days go in feeding stray dogs, bathing small pups, putting out extra bird food, sharing peanuts with squirrels or adoring any animal I get a glimpse of. Following the same trend, two more days go in watering the plants, continuing with the compost pit or sharing gossip with the blooming buds. Sundays are reserved for introspection. It is when I recollect every ecstatic memory and review every improvement I can make in the next week.
Life has indeed started brimming with positivity and each step is taking the life tree closer to spring.