Recently i heard news of a young girls death by fire . I had seen her long back with her father when she was a child and i started thinking ....
When i myself was a child ,death was not an uncomfortable thought . Staying at ancestral home used to go to funerals frequently and the smell of incense , the religious chants and except for the absence of laughter it was just another day . Always it was some old person who lived his life to the full and who usually was sick in the end and then one fine day went his way to the nether world . All natural processes and taken in its stride and as a child with less worldly experience there was no reflection on this phenomenon .
Years passed by and as a blogger and reading the news daily , i hear about death be it in news online or offline . But its when it strikes close such as in a person whom you know that the reflection part comes in . Of course there is the usual reaction of shock and sadness , followed by the reflection of how that particular death impacts the immediate relatives .
But more importantly i think about the bigger picture and death . Especially when the death is of a young person . Most often , me included ,we go through life as if death doesnt exist . We expect to complete a full lifespan . But as of the time of this writing no one has the guarantee that they will see the next moment . But still observation of many people leads me to these open questions :
1. When deaths are so sudden and life changing ...Why do some people are so materialistic these days ? When they get reminded that life is actually quite short why do they still hoard money , collect money at the cost of relationships and neither use it for others nor even use it properly for themselves . I have seen countless people who have lots of assets but neither enjoy it fully nor give it to others ( i am not talking about reasonable savings ) . Though not everyone will experience death of a daughter or son why dont people see life in the bigger perspective ?
2 . When we were children , we both used to occasionally have a fight with our dad . Because he used to tell us " All the children i come across are also my children " . In our possessiveness we forgot the message he was trying to convey . Just because we were his biological children doesnt mean that he should restrict his love and affection only to us . And he meant what he told and to this day one of the traits for which he is loved by all is because of this . He loved his nuclear family very much but his abundant affection was spread to the children he came across (across social classes ) . This is in sharp contrast to many i meet these days who are so "nuclear " that they have a very hard time thinking beyond their family . And the paradox is many of these "pampered children " become as self centred as their parents and exclude even their parents in later life .
3. I have more than a few times heard about ultrarich people who were very self centred and materialistic suddenly turned to an ascetic life after sudden death of their child . The move was so extreme as was the death .My last question is why be so self centred and why be the extreme ascetic ? Why dont you choose the middle path even while your children are alive ?
Just as Buddha told the average person to choose the middle path why dont we too choose the middle path in enjoying lifes pleasures still not being "materialistic " . Not going for extreme nuclear family love , extreme love of money etc still keeping things in perspective and right balance .
Would love your comments on this topic from your experience ..
When i myself was a child ,death was not an uncomfortable thought . Staying at ancestral home used to go to funerals frequently and the smell of incense , the religious chants and except for the absence of laughter it was just another day . Always it was some old person who lived his life to the full and who usually was sick in the end and then one fine day went his way to the nether world . All natural processes and taken in its stride and as a child with less worldly experience there was no reflection on this phenomenon .
Years passed by and as a blogger and reading the news daily , i hear about death be it in news online or offline . But its when it strikes close such as in a person whom you know that the reflection part comes in . Of course there is the usual reaction of shock and sadness , followed by the reflection of how that particular death impacts the immediate relatives .
But more importantly i think about the bigger picture and death . Especially when the death is of a young person . Most often , me included ,we go through life as if death doesnt exist . We expect to complete a full lifespan . But as of the time of this writing no one has the guarantee that they will see the next moment . But still observation of many people leads me to these open questions :
1. When deaths are so sudden and life changing ...Why do some people are so materialistic these days ? When they get reminded that life is actually quite short why do they still hoard money , collect money at the cost of relationships and neither use it for others nor even use it properly for themselves . I have seen countless people who have lots of assets but neither enjoy it fully nor give it to others ( i am not talking about reasonable savings ) . Though not everyone will experience death of a daughter or son why dont people see life in the bigger perspective ?
2 . When we were children , we both used to occasionally have a fight with our dad . Because he used to tell us " All the children i come across are also my children " . In our possessiveness we forgot the message he was trying to convey . Just because we were his biological children doesnt mean that he should restrict his love and affection only to us . And he meant what he told and to this day one of the traits for which he is loved by all is because of this . He loved his nuclear family very much but his abundant affection was spread to the children he came across (across social classes ) . This is in sharp contrast to many i meet these days who are so "nuclear " that they have a very hard time thinking beyond their family . And the paradox is many of these "pampered children " become as self centred as their parents and exclude even their parents in later life .
3. I have more than a few times heard about ultrarich people who were very self centred and materialistic suddenly turned to an ascetic life after sudden death of their child . The move was so extreme as was the death .My last question is why be so self centred and why be the extreme ascetic ? Why dont you choose the middle path even while your children are alive ?
Just as Buddha told the average person to choose the middle path why dont we too choose the middle path in enjoying lifes pleasures still not being "materialistic " . Not going for extreme nuclear family love , extreme love of money etc still keeping things in perspective and right balance .
Would love your comments on this topic from your experience ..
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