Every day, over 30,000 people are killed in traffic. Cigarette-lovers live to old age while children choke on secondhand smoke. Someone survives a life-threatening accident, while someone dies in his sleep.
The imbalance of life tosses victims aside and pushes others on a pedestal. It is relentless but forgiving; gentle but merciless, irresolute but compassionate. It is uninfluenced by the speeches that move us and the waves that crash on our emotional beaches. It is unbiased and uninvolved.
It seems that the solace we seek in life is received by chance; not by our making. Perhaps to be truly happy, one must be born into a miracle. Be born in the right country, be the right color of skin, be a product of affluence, and only then will life give you the fruits of its orchards. Perhaps life is built for a lucky few, constructed to be abused, manipulated, and wasted so that the elite can lavishly consume. Then again, perhaps not.
Yes, life is uncertain, yes sometimes events unravel unanticipated, unwanted, but that is life. Although we are born into a certain life, it is not to say that we have little or no control over it. There have been countless instances where life has taken turns in the lives of many in both wanted and unwanted directions due to mere human doings.
The question is not ‘if’ we can do it but rather ‘should’ we do it? Are the efforts necessary? Is it worth our time, worth our energy? Whatever life we are born into or we’ve come to create, might not have to fit a certain ideal picture to be enjoyed or cherished.
Life is as we interpret it. A man with a mansion can be just as sad as a man living on the streets and the man without a shelter can be just as happy as the man in the mansion. When life is uncertain, for example, when we are not aware of the time it might end, it is better to give in, better to start seeing life differently.
Perhaps, we can start by looking around, and actually opening our eyes to what we already have, that we wish to not let go of. When we try placing ourselves in the world and deem our lives to be unlucky compared to the majority, we have to reflect on the times we have wasted our precious energy in trying to give our life a place and rather enjoyed life as it is whatever its quality might have been.
Once our time and energy are allocated into making our lives better, there is not much left to invest the same in something that is already in place and that ‘something’ can be your family, your friends, yourself or probably your life itself.
In a way this uncertainty is a gift, an opportunity handed to us to be realized and used efficiently. It is a motivator to live life with satisfaction, a life that is devoid of the constant search for something else. Some have a lot to be gratified with, some have less, but whatever you might have, hold on to it, because happiness can be discovered in the mere appreciation of what is already present.
