On destiny and ways to live life

For almost a decade now, I have wrestled with a single question: How does one live life? I have not found the answer yet, but I seem to have accumulated enough material to create a blog post..

I have studied and experimented with many different philosophies about life, and all those seem to be right at one point or another.

You have The Gita telling you to perform your actions and dedicating them to God, without expecting anything; for we all have been created with some purpose and the world is a big puzzle where we all fit in; aparently. This concept in itself is fine. But its easy to twist around in a fatalist way, many people (including myself) using it as an excuse to accept defeat, while others have used it as an excuse to avoid all action altogether.

You also have religions such as Buddhism which advocate renunciation of all desires. Essentially, the basis of that channel of thought is desire leads to sorrow. So to eliminate sorrow, you eliminate desire. However when I tried it, there seemed to be a loophole in this thought process: you end up with a desire to have no desire. And if thats not messed up enough, what do you do when you realise that the world has gone by while you renounced all your desires and so-called worldly pleasures? Not to mention the fact that you could have atleast nurtured a good desire to take care of your family and maybe do something useful for society.

Then, you have the new-age motivational thinkers exhorting you to follow your dreams. The logic being, ultimately everything has its own risks. But when you do something you also desire, you are better equipped mentally to tackle the problems that you face. Some people misconstrue this is recklesseness, while others use it as an excuse to be reckless. Some others lack the patience thats needed when following such a path, because in life nothing happens over one day. Things take days and months to work out, and expecting miracles in a short term only leads to disappointment later when you realise that some defeats are imminent no matter what you do. The other side is, its hard to take some risks when the future of your family depends on you.

By far, the most practical advice I gleaned was from the book "Who Moved My Cheese", recommended by someone whose judgement I trust. The book didnt expound any new philosophy. Rather, it made me understand the simple fact that life is always changing. And what matters is how fast you can adapt to those changes. You fall in love one day, you switch jobs another day, you take a new challenge some other day. You are better prepared to take on the risks associated with these changes when you expect change to occur. That makes you more receptive and you start looking out for signs that signal the onset of a new phase in life. Ofcourse, you also get tired when you only see changes, because its extremely exhausting and frustrating to always chase a moving target. But you cannot complain about something that is anyway out of your control. The best you can do, is adapt.

After going through all these mind and personality benders, I have realised that none of them really works always. What does work, however, is a healthy dose of realism, confidence and discipline. It helps to know what you are capable of. It also helps when you know you have people in your life who will be with you when it counts, especially your family, and your spouse, if you are lucky enough to be married. Above all, you need to have a lot of self-belief and faith in yourself. Its amazing how many people ignore that one detail. They have faith in God, and forget that when God created them, they were also endowed with enough good qualities as well to build a good life. At the end of the day however, the ones who are left standing are the ones who believe they can.

In the words of a famous person,

"

If you think you are beaten, you are,

You've got to think high to rise.

You've got to be sure of yourself,

before you can ever win the prize.

Life's battles don't always go to the stronger or swifter man.

But sooner or later, the one who wins

Is the one who thinks he can."