Being chased by death…

Every now and then, I keep thinking about the meaning of my life. Sometimes, I find an answer that convinces me and sometimes it hurts me deeply. Each one of us comes with different characters, aims, feelings and destinations but there is one thing common to all, the ‘death’. I would be untruthful if I say, ‘I don’t fear from death’. Yesterday, in my dream I saw my death. It was just like another dream, it wasn’t terrifying but the content of the dream shook me.

I was there, motionless looking at the people who have gathered to look at my dead body. I was there, helpless, unable to understand what would happen to me. I was there, powerless, lost in the jungle of memories. I could see a life, a selfish life, where every day and every night, I worked for myself, my ego and my pleasure. I could find no deed which I can say proudly to God. For that matter, the whole life appeared to be vague.

There I was… asking the question, what’s the meaning of life?

When I woke up, I realized that it was just a dream but a message to wake up. In pursuit of our selfish motives, we forget that our stay on this planet is temporary. Death is chasing us every moment and you never know when that moment will arrive. This deep uncertainty of life calls for rethinking on how we are living our lives.

I am convinced that there is life beyond death in some other form- else it makes no sense to define a short life compared to astronomical scales. But the knowledge that one can gain in this short span is critical for the success in the next phase. All of us are born with certain capabilities but there remains one capability common to all of us… the capability to love. Few days back, I read about the life story of an astronomer who dedicated his whole life in understanding a distant asteroid. My first thought was “whole life to study a single asteroid”? Then I realized, it’s the power of love.

Imagine, how happy God might have felt knowing that one person millions of miles away, made an attempt to understand a part of creation, which no one believed to be significant. There are millions of such unexplored objects in this universe, which are waiting to be loved and understood. For God, all of those objects are significant and He wouldn’t have made them if they weren’t. There is a reason why they exist.

Having said all that, the key idea I want you to take away is that, before the death reaches you, love the creation of God so much that even the death respects your love.