WHO IS LIVING & WHO IS EXISTING

It is difficult to state what is living and what is existing.  It is equally difficult to say when living starts and mere existence stops or when living stops and mere existence starts.

Living ,  the way I understand is to be bubbling with enthusiasm every minute.  Living is to find passion in life and in all activities of life.  A person who lives will never gets bored.

The major factor which prevents us from living is the fear.  Fear of insecurity or fear of loosing the loved one or fear of loss of reputation or fear of one kind or the other.

You do not want to eat to your satisfaction due to the fear that you would put on weight.  You do not want to express your views because of fear of rejection of your views and yourself.  To do anything you have to calculate, take a concious decision and such decision is invariably influenced by one kind of fear or the other.

Invariably children live, may be upto the age of 5 years.  They live in the present.  They have no concept of future.  When you don’t think of future, fear would not influence you.  Your fears are mostly as to what would happen in future consequent upon your present actions.

Added to this major problem to live with inbuilt fears, society also trains you not to live but to exist.  Society tells you contentment is very good.  Be content and happy.  Neither contentment nor happiness gives you enthusiasm.  Both would kill your enthusiasm.  Both would contribute to remove the aspect of living and introduce the aspect of existing.

As and when your age advances the extent of your living reduces and extent of mere existence increases.  This is principally because you live on  fears of future having absolutely no enthusiasm.

About 5 years back I met a lady may be about 65 years.  She was expressing unhappiness about her age.  I asked her to become young.  She asked me how.  I told ‘repeat the mistakes you did when you were young’.  Believe me, she shook my hands for about  5 minutes with so much of happiness radiating in her face.  I am sure that she remembered all her previous follies during that 5 minutes and she enjoyed.  For those 5 minutes she lived.  She remembered her follies with enthusiasm and pleasure. Fear of future did not trouble her for 5 minutes. I am trying to say that your fears can be overcome.

Youth was one thing worthy having and living.  I am using past tense.  Days have changed.  There is so much of exposure to the present day youth that they see a lot more than what they can achieve and they live in the fear of not being able to achieve.   When we were young, when there was no TV, we only knew that one should get a job and earn a few thousands and thought it to be the purpose of life.  We lived with enthusiasm of seeking small pleasures.  The pleasure to have a Dosa, to meet a good friend.

Youth, more than a physical stage, is an art.  “No great artist ever sees things as they really are.  If he did, he would cease to be an artist” so said Oscar Wilde.  Hence in youth which is an art, you have imagination, you have novelty and if only you can live in the present, you can live.  If only you do not worry about   future, there is no fear and you can live.

At any rate that man who has enthusiasm, who looks forward for passion, pleasure, achievement lives.  That man who lives in fear exists.

If you want to live, live in the present.   If you are living with ideas of future, it is so uncertain and you are so much filled with fears, you cannot have enthusiasm. 

You would certainly ask me that when I advocate achievements, it is a process to be achieved in future and as such my contentions contradict each other.  If I ask you to achieve, it means I am asking you to live with ideas of future.

Achievement does not require traveling of miles and miles.  Life is a razor’s edge.  Your idea of achieving is in the present.  It is this idea which gives you enthusiasm and which makes life worthy living.  The moment you get the idea you are on the other side of the razor’s edge and you already successful.  The results you expect on achievement may be of a future day.  But your concentration is not on the results of your efforts.  Your concentration is on the efforts of today with a passing thought  that  the efforts may give  fruits on a future day.  Your concentration is not on the fruits but on the efforts of today.  This is what Bhagawad Gita also says. 

If only you can live in the present, you can live without fear.  You would be living the life.  You would not merely be existing.

Any person who has passion, passion for pleasure, enthusiasm would be living and others would be existing.