The whole
humanity will agree with me if I say that we must live each day to the full or
to the maximum. All of us want or at least wish to live each day in the best
possible way, bringing all our potentialities and talents to fruition. None of
us want our energies and talents go in the waste dustbin. We want them to be in
the vanguard of our life as an inspiration to others. Sometimes we find
ourselves in the midst of activities, trying hard to achieve so many things in
life. Such suffocating moments make us think that we are very busy. When we are
busy we think that we are living our life to the full potentiality. We often
confuse realizing our potentialities with accomplishing activities. However, we
realize that to live each moment of the day to the full, with unconditional
love, sensitivity, openness and intelligence is not so easy and at times even
seems as the heaviest cross of our lives.
We make great
plans for our lives and then we attempt to
tailor each passing moment of the day according to that giant plan of ours but
often in the process we forget to live the moment, and all the more we are
never fully present at the moment. We forget to live the present, we get
entrapped by our constant worries of how to achieve that giant goal of ours
that we have set for our lives. In the process of striving for the set goal, we
encounter so many amazing internal and external realities of life but we become
blind to them. They never catch the attention of our lives. We become dead
practically to everything, perhaps except for the thing that we are striving
for. For instance, internally we might get lovely feelings or sensations that might
evoke to greater mysteries of life but we will not care about them because they
come as an obstacle in our way to achieve our set goal. All that we do is push
them aside. Externally we might encounter fascinating natural beauty or we may
encounter sweet smiles of a child or a crying face of the old person but we
will ignore them as if they are non-entities to us. For us all that matters is
how to achieve the set goal. In the bargain of achieving the goal we become
insensitive, conditioned, narrow-minded, and so on.
Living each
moment to the full and in the happiest way possible requires of us to be
totally authentic first of all to the core of our very being and then to others
and finally to the whole of reality.
This authenticity also means to act according to our own convictions and
not to follow blindly the commands or the dictates of others. Blind acceptance
of anything does not in any way make us better human beings. To be fully human
we need to understand what we accept, obey, follow, and also the significance
of it. Moreover, when it comes to the integration of thinking and acting things
becomes very difficult and at the same time complicated. There emerge a big gap
between what we think and what we do. Sometimes all the good things that we
think of remain only in the theoretical level. Very often they are realized in
the theoretical level, intellectually we might feel happy about it and it might
even give intellectual satisfaction but they are far from being realized in the
level of action. In the level of action they are paralyzed. We might be
bombastic in our speech but in action we might be empty. For this reason the
toughest thing perhaps is to be the person we are.
Most of the
times, we are never the real person as we are deep within. Very often we get lost in accumulating either
material or psychological goods that we see as necessary for our security. We
are worried about what people say or think about us but we forget to inquire our very own selves. Instead of finding who we really are, we depend on the
words of others. We always want to escape from our own selves and dwell in the
world of fantasy. Most often we are frightened to inquire to the deepest core
of our being because at that level we realize the constant battle that goes on
deep within. Many times we would want to share with others but we can’t express
them as we would want to because we get the feeling that others might not like
or it might even disturb them. There is the burning desire deep within to share
but we would not do so, rather we would rationalize and say that we have
absolutely no problems. So, what we do is to dress up the internal battles with
lovely aprons so that people might see it with appreciation. Sometimes we
struggle so much but we will not show them. Rather, if at all we disclose the
problem we do so by decorating it with appealing piece of cloths but we know
that covering up the reality will not solve our problems in any way.
Perhaps the
heaviest cross of our life is to live each and every moment of the day to the
full. As we said it is not as easy as it sounds to be. However, in the Person
of Jesus we have a great model who can help us in this aspect of living each
moment to the full. He lived his life to the full with authenticity but He also
paid the price for being true to Himself. Living to the full in its
authenticity demands a heavy price to be paid in this beautiful world infected
by corrupt individuals. However, living authentic life has its blessing for one
can live in freedom and in peace of mind. He advises to His disciples, ‘take my
yoke for it is light,’ meaning to say that Jesus is addressing us to live like
Him and in living like Him there will be no heavier crosses because His love is
unconditional. If we live our life with unconditional love, honesty, sincerity,
affection and so on then our life will be very simple and very easy because
there is no burden in being authentic to oneself. In fact, being authentic
liberates an individual’s because Jesus Himself has said that if you know the
truth the truth will set you free.
Hence, to set
ourselves free we need to find the different types of crosses that encumber us.
It is in realizing our problems and encountering them as they appear to us that
we set ourselves free. Just as Jesus encountered the death to attain total
liberation, so too we need to encounter our problems, face the challenges as
they come, get up to courage and wisdom if we are fallen for it is only in
rising from the fallen state that one encounters the newer reality that which
is totally different. To resurrect we need
to acknowledge the crosses of our lives and it is in bearing the crosses like
Jesus with unconditional love that we would be able to liberate ourselves to
ultimate freedom or love. Jesus forever stands as model in living life to the
full.
Romanius Barwa
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