Greatest Lesson in Life

 

 

What is the most precious substance we have, once we are born? It is life itself. Because without life, we cannot have anything else. Life is the first, foremost and the most vital possession of ours. And to sustain this life, what is most important? Is it food, water, anything materialistic, or emotional, spiritual, love… well actually no. The most important object for us to sustain life is a breath of air, which we often inhale and exhale without conscious thoughts. Without food we can survive nearly two weeks, without water nearly a week. Absence of materialistic possessions like a house, car, or expensive jewelry won’t make any dent to life. Lack of human emotions of friendship, family, and even love, wouldn’t kill us, though might drive us to depression or suicide. It is only the air that we breathe we just cannot live without. Perhaps for a couple of minutes, after that we would surely perish.

 

The irony of this air that we breathe is not only a lesson for us to realize how one must live but also an example of what nature is trying to teach us from a very fundamental point of view. And the greatest irony being that despite such obvious repetitive lesson (around 20,000 times every day) we human either do not realize it or do not learn from it. Very few do, most don’t apply even if they realize.

 

An act of breathing has two parts, inhalation and exhalation, one follows another, continuously, repetitively, day and night, each and every day of your life, from the moment we are born till the moment our heart cease and we die. It has no respite, no holidays, and no rest. Irrespective of what we do, who we are, gender, class, wealth, it just goes on and on.  And in this act of breathing, the act of exhalation is far more important than that of inhalation. In the mountains, I always tell my team to consciously exhale with the full force of their lungs and empty it of air, since after that inhalation would happen naturally without effort.

 

Breathing-in or inhalation is like taking possession of something (like buying something materialistic or getting married and owning a person till death do you apart, etc), and breathing-out or exhalation can be a perfect metaphor of letting go. Now here is my point, when the most precious object for us to stay alive, the air we breathe, we cannot hold on to and must let go in less than 10 seconds, then why on earth do we hold on to those unnecessary things for ever, till our last dying breath! And create all the miseries for ourselves.

 

All our negativity, sadness, miseries, everything is because of only one reason, that we refuse to let go. Either we refuse to let go of the material objects and the physical existence of certain individuals or our emotions attached to those objects and individuals. There is absolutely no other root cause for all our miseries.

 

When we begin to possess an object of desire, be it a car, house, job, jewelry, either by creating or building or achieving through our efforts we get attached to them and won’t let them go, and over time when these things start giving us grief, we still do not let them go. Instead we try to find the solutions somewhere else. More you own materialism, more you would realize that despite perhaps having a higher sense of achievement, your worries and dilemmas are now bigger than when you possessed less. Well I am not saying that we shouldn’t strive to achieve more, just be ready to let go. Similarly when we begin to own people (parents, siblings, lovers, spouses, children, friends, etc) and refuse to let them go, we again face misery since they would go one day for sure. The emotions and memories can linger, but they won’t for long.

 

There’s another kind of attachment that we often harbor that I feel is the most caustic and eroding to our well being.

 

This is holding on to our negative emotions towards ourselves or others. Emotions like anger, envy, hatred, possessiveness, attachment, jealousy, ill-intent, fear, annoyance, irritation, grief, disgust, rage, ego, and loneliness, be it for others or towards our own inner self, are most harmful. We don’t let them go whereas they are the easiest to let go since they have no substance at all. They are thinner and lighter than air but sit most heavy on our mind and body.

 

So here’s what I would like you to do, to learn to let go of all these negative things, just like you let go of the breathe that you inhale. Always remember that despite the air we breathe in being the most important for us to stay alive we have to let it go to continue to live. Similarly we must let go of our negative emotions and not hold on to them. And the reward of letting go is wonderful. Nature abhors vacuum, hence when we let go of our negativity, what rushes in to fill up the vacuum is positivity. And life becomes wonderful again just like after a dark night a bright morning arrives with the rising sun.

 

LET IT GO to LET IN