Uncertain Inevitability

[Below could contain material that might offend people's sentiments and emotions. So proceed at your own peril.]

What is one thing that is certain in life? Death. Inevitable. But uncertain. And uncertainty being one of the reasons for most of the problems in our lives. We are always in a struggle to deal with death and since it is not in our control, we are not prepared. It leaves us suddenly with this void that we are unable to fill. There are so many things we then discover that we should have and could have done, but we never knew that person was not going to be around for long. We are filled with regret. "I should have sent that letter..", " I should have apologised to him..", " I could have gone for the party after all, but...", " Should have visited her when I had been to Kerala..", "I should have spent some time during my last trip..". These are some of the regret lines that many of us might be able to relate to. We procrastinate matters because they never seemed important to us at that point.

If somebody were to ask me "Are you ready to die?", of course my first reaction to that will be one of shock and disbelief that such a question was raised in the first instance. When does one feel ready to die? Will we ever be ready? Isn't there always something more that we would like to do? I envy those people who know exactly how their life is headed and know exactly when the time is over for them. My hubby's grandpa was one such person. He knew exactly when he was going to sign off from his life. It was such a measured, organised and disciplined life that he had lived. So then how do we measure our lives? How do we know that we have lived happily? How do we make our families the source of our happiness? This post of mine looks at these questions both from the point of view of life and death.

I happened to read an article on life recently written by a Harvard Business School Professor Clayton M Christensen. My hubby found this article very interesting and had asked me to read. I found it quite interesting too and so decided to share some of it with all of you. [Article HOW WILL YOU MEASURE YOUR LIFE by Clayton M Christensen, taken from Harvard Business Review July-Aug 2010].

Harvard Business School's graduating class had asked their Professor to address them and advise them on how to use his principles to improve their personal lives. He opened his own life to them as a case study to illustrate how the theories from their course could be used to guide their life's decisions. I don't mean to say that these are THE RULES, but they are surely worth a read.


The Prof says that money is not the ultimate satisfying factor in anybody's life. It is the opportunity to grow, to learn, to let others grow, to be recognised for the achievements - these define the level of satisfaction in our lives. And Management practiced well, helps one in achieving all this. Having a right strategy and a clear purpose to life is very important. The best time to think about all this is now (was then for the students who were in Univ). Procrastinating on identifying the purposes of our lives to a later time is what we do. That time never comes because we are always caught up in our career development and then family commitments etc. He advised his students that it was necessary that they contemplate on such questions of life. This would help them figure out their life's purpose (the measure of life). According to him, that would be the most useful lesson they would have ever learnt from the school.

Decisions that we make on how much time and energy we allocate to our personal life, which ultimately shapes our life's strategy, is akin to allocation of resources. For a person who is busy with work commitments, family commitments and social commitments it is always a difficult thing to decide where to invest and how much. This is very similar to corporate scenarios. We all have a limited resource of time and energy that we can spend therefore decision making needs to be wise. When we spend more time on career development, we see the result almost immediately by the way of promotions or monetary recognitions. When it comes to devoting resource on our family, we do not typically see the result like the one mentioned earlier. But a few years down the line, it pays off. Most business disasters are as a result of ventures behind instant gratification and greed. Unfortunately this reflects on personal lives too. Life matters that used to be so very important to us at one point in time, soon becomes neglected. We fail to notice that this is where more resources need to be invested to keep the boat of life sailing smoothly and not just afloat.

Prof Christensen says that families have a culture too, just like the companies. The culture defines how a problem is handled and culture is evolved over time. Kids have to be inculcated into the new culture right from their early stages. They develop self esteem and confidence, just like new employees of a company, by doing things that are hard and learning on their own what works and what does not. Nobody knows what the future holds for us. We make decisions based on what worked for us in the past. Sometimes in our lives we choose between right and wrong decision by using "just this one time" strategy. As much tempting as that can be, we don't pause to see where we are headed before succumbing to the temptations. No matter how smart we become, we should always have a humble eagerness to learn something from everybody.

So, all these tips from Prof Clayton M Chirtensen could help us in measuring our progress in life. The question however remains that by having measured and fulfilled everything in life, having lived a happy life and having shouldered all responsibilties, would we be ready to accept death anytime? To open our hearts to the concept of death, we have to first understand it and start learning to accept death and celebrate death. Many enlightened leaders have said that death is not the actual end of all. It is a transition of one form to the other. I personally feel that more than the fear of death itself, it is the uncertainty factor with which death arrives that catches me off-guard and makes me want to avoid facing it altogether.

Here are some thoughts on death that I would like to share with you all at this point. There was a programme that was aired on the Australian TV channel ABC1, a few days ago. The programme is called Gruen Transfer. It is a show about advertising and how it works on us. Every week they pick two advertising agencies and present them with a topic/brief and they are expected to come up with an Ad for that. The best campaign wins an award.

This was the brief for the show on 21 July 2010:
As the nation greys and our superannuation (provident fund in India) burden goes into the red, we've asked for a campaign to make Australians see the value of compulsory euthanasia for the over 80s.

There were two agencies who were given this brief - THE WORKS (represented by Kevin MacMillan) and JACK WATTS CURRIE (represented by Collin Watts). Here is what they both came up with:

ABC TV - The Gruen Transfer - The Pitch
(if you are viewing this video after 27/7/2010, click on this link and look for THE PITCH episode dated 21/7/2010)

I realise that this can evoke some very strong emotions and anger in many of us. Some may find it funny that people can even entertain such thoughts. Although, I feel humour is the best way to face reality. Out of both the campaigns, the second ad that did not win the award on the show was the one that made me think a lot. It addressed the very fact that has been troubling me all along - the (un)certainty of the event. I choked in the middle of watching it. A very bold topic to face upto indeed, especially when it involves a lot of personal emotions. I loved the concept with which they had to play and the message it was trying to convey to me. If we knew that lives ended at 80 (or pick a number), what would we do? Do you think that we would plan our lives a bit more better? Would this force us to enjoy our lives to the fullest everyday? Will this force us to say things that we never bothered to tell anybody like "I love you"? Would this make us keep in touch with those whom we never had time for? Will we have any regrets in life?

I feel that we will not procrastinate and will start valuing everything that has been bestowed upon us. We will learn to make the most of everything and stop being greedy. Won't we? Wouldn't that prepare us to face death anyday? We seem to treat life like any other commodity, that comes with an expiry date. It is sad and I suppose we are to be blamed for that too. We seem to have lost the plot somewhere along the rat race that we are all part of. Possibly we lost it from the moment we began the race. What is stopping us from loving our lives and dear ones at this very moment? Let us not forget our loved ones. Let us not ignore them. Let us not take them for granted. They make our lives complete. Let us not wait for tomorrow. Say it now. Do it now. As tomorrow could be too late.

 

Dear Vijima - Thank you and this feedback does mean quite a lot to me. What you said is exactly what I have been thinking about too. But my question is again that even if we knew when it was all going to end, I don't think we would be prepared and thats just the fact I guess. We want to live longer and longer.


Poojya Kamalji - If there was anybody from whom I would have expected such an answer, that is you. I have told this many times before and saying it again - There is so much one can learn from you Kamalji. I knew this is a distasteful topic to talk about. The more I kept dwelling on it, the more compelled I felt to share it here. That video that I had linked on the post had such a huge effect on me. Both hubby and me kept talking and talking about it and it wouldn't go away. I loved it so much and could not keep it to myself. You surely are another person who knows exactly what to do and very well planned and organised in your life. I envy that and hope that we can achieve atleast half as much as you have managed to. Cheers to you and Harshaji! One wife is enough in a life time!! - something many husbands can relate to isn't it ? .


Dear Gangachechi - WOW that is such a great story about your father. I think most of the earlier generation knew everything. They were so much in tune with nature unlike us where other "colourful" distractions cloud our mind. My hubby's grandfather, about whom I had mentioned in the post, he knew that after a certain number of times chanting Narayana Narayana, that would be it. And two/three days after he had completed that count he passed away! Like your dad, he had also taken care of everything that was going to be required after his left. Thank you for reading the post chechi.