Life's Fun and Silence

The Separators

One of my friend called me and casually chatting and during the chat asked what I was doing for the upcoming new-year eve night. I said, nothing. He then said that he had noticed that I don’t wish birthdays, wedding anniversaries also. And in a very searching tone, asked why do not I show importance to these events in life and so on so forth?

I did not have any valid reason to explain away that difficult question. This blog is an after-thought of that question. It neither answers nor is expected to answer that question. But it did leave me with a larger revelation that I think, has changed me.

Time, as it stands, is very difficult for people to understand. Einstein himself struggled to explain what time is and what it meant for physics and common man. Probability, space, money, weather, clock, life itself and even geography is impacted due to time. So what am I saying…Let me try with a story first. Flashback!

This story is more than 5000 years old. The great yogi Narada Muni explains to Emperor Kansa, why it is difficult to identify the 8^th child (since it was supposed to be the child that will ultimately kill the Emperor). How does he do it? He draws 8 dots in a circle and asks Kansa to count 8 starting from each of the dots. Kansa finds out (and so we all will, if we do the same count) that any of the dot could be the 8^th. He then decides to kill all 8 children. 

Three simple things can be understood from this story and it is a revelation.

First – time goes round and in cycle (not surprisingly, the universe/space is also going round and round)

Second – Since time goes round and round, there is no beginning or end.

Third – Since there is no beginning or end and time goes in circle, there is no past or future but only present (past and future becomes meaningless in a circle)

So what? How does this gyan answer the question asked by my friend?

In our lives, birthdays, anniversaries, new-year etc etc are all “separators” of our lifetime. We use these “separators” to categories your life into phases, just like you compartmentalise a big file with “separators”. Our lives are defined by these separators, birth, age, health, death and so on. We start defining ourselves from the separators point, losing in essence, ourselves. The question that I asked myself, will I give importance to the papers between the separators or the separators are important?

So what again? Can’t we party for these separators? Sure, we can, if one does like to. Celebrate every such “separator” that you create and enjoy its presence. But can I neglect the papers, aka time, between my separators? Certainly not. But then, we don’t wish birthdays every day? Do we?

But then, as I was ruminating on this fact, it dawned, that aren’t we- you, me and people like us, in the larger scheme of the time in universe, ourselves “separators”?

I want my life to be a celebration itself, because it is, but just a separator!