'Your Life Is Not Just Yours' - Life in terms of 'Acceptance'

      It is my life, don’t worry”, I proclaimed with a sense of ownership.

  “Better understand it brother, your life is not just yours”, my friend remarked instantly, with intense reverberation in his words.

I believe that an external stimulus is a pre-requisite for the human mind to initiate any enterprise or to bring about any constructive transformation in his perceptions. And, undeniably these few effusive words that he said, were enough to trigger my mind, and to re-establish my proclamation - of being the lone owner of the so called -‘My Life’.

‘Life’ is definitely not a stock market for individuals to invest and get shares of your subsistence. It is you who gives ‘life’ a physical shape to persist; it is you who gives an ethereal meaning to an otherwise corporeal existence and it is you who drives the reins of conscience relating yourself with your surroundings. Life is neither a regime run by others to dominate your existence nor it is an independently owned possession. Every individual has an altogether different mindset towards his/her life but the peculiar predicament lies in the fact that we humans inspect ‘life’ only with respect to our own individual domains. It seems as if we have put an intentional covering over our eyes with a motive to prevent our inner self from witnessing the society as our well-wishers and motivators. By fragmenting ‘life’ into pieces of egocentricity -‘I’, ‘my’, mine and ‘me’, we develop incessant travesties of ‘life’ and thereby make it senseless. It is not solely our living that comprises life. Instead it is what we live unto others, that sketches its real picture.

 We often involve ourselves into disagreements with our parents, brothers and sisters, friends, colleagues and squabble with them over irrelevant issues, thinking that they never understand our emotions; they never give space and time for our existence or that they never comprehend our sentiments to a level that they ought to. Negative perceptions are generated only when we don’t accept. Take an example from an altogether different perspective, two years back, me and my friends planned to set off for a trekking expedition in the mountainous region of Manali. I was reluctant to join them because of the hardships and risks involved in it. My negative perception that ‘I cannot’ was only because of my non-acceptance. Anyhow my friends persuaded me to join the troop and we did succeed in our undertaking. On reaching the benchmark, all my friends yelled with a sense of contentment and joy, “Hurray! We have done it guys”. For my folks, it was a piece of great adventure because they accepted to face the ordeals. For them acceptance brought satisfaction and joy but for me non-acceptance brought only a sense of ‘relief’ so that I can say, “Thank God, we are safe”. We can find happiness in everything that we undertake and in every individual whom we encounter, only when we agree to accept the things that come along our path. Acceptance can change our 'grief' to 'mirth', our 'relief' to an 'adventure' and 'dearth' to 'satisfaction'.

We need to understand that ‘acceptance’ means hewing egocentricity apart and giving our lives a directed platform to act. The day we respond to our external surroundings with a sense of acceptance, we will certainly not let 'negative perceptions' to overpower our minds. It is this ‘acceptance’ that enables us to sense optimism, it this ‘acceptance’ that generates forgiveness; it is this ‘acceptance’ that helps us in developing our faith in others and it is this ‘acceptance’ that enables us to firmly believe and realize that ‘Our life is not just ours’.

Oftentimes we get scolding from our parents for our wrong doings and many a times we try to justify ourselves by saying, “My existence means nothing to you”. Sometimes, due to indefinite reasons a rift is generated in friendship and we prefer to disintegrate, thinking that we play least role in others life; at times when we our emotionally and psychologically hurt we start believing that our subsistence is inconsequential and insignificant to others. Live every moment of your life with a motive to create togetherness and it this togetherness that signifies our acceptance and justifies the notion -‘Your life is not just yours’. Without even giving a second thought, how often do individuals put an end to their lives on vague grounds that their existence holds no relevance; why do individuals live in the servitude of myth and obliterate their individual existence?  Remember- The ‘life’ you are living may not hold significance to you but ‘Your life might be the most precious gift for someone, somewhere in some corner of this world’. Your 'life' may be a support for someone else's 'life'. Love, respect and renovate your 'living', because it may be the only source for someone's existence.

Just close your eyes for at least one minute and pray to God, thanking Him to have bestowed upon you the gift of ‘Life’.

 Let us prostrate our heart; soul and mind in front of Him in gratitude for imparting us with all the wonderful people, letting us know and realize that ‘our life is not just ours’. The way we live our life is a gift unto Him. Every day when we wake up in the morning, believe; the Almighty still thinks that our ‘Life’ is worthy enough to be lived by us.

Your Life Is Not Just Yours

A Special thanks to Avinish Jain for evoking the thought.

Akshay Thakur