Last weekend we were invited to celebrate 50th birthday of one of our close friends. Everyone at the party was talking about how many ups and downs this friend of ours had gone through and the continuous rat race he ran during the past 50 years. Yes, it is true that most of the people spend their entire lives running a rat race until they realize that they do not have anymore physical or mental strength. They are also not left with any efforts to actually do things and live a life they really wanted to.
Therefore, let's meditate on the most important calculation that one should constantly be mindful of in their lives. If the average life span of a human being is assumed as 70 years, it is equivalent to roughly 25,550 days. This means a human being has 25,550 days out of which 7,300 days (initial 20 years) goes in childhood and schooling/ education. The next 20 years of life (from 21-40 years) goes mostly in building one's career and on crucial family matters. This means after removing first 40 years of your life from 25,550 days you are left with 10,950 days roughly. Let's say 950 days are utilized in non productive matters like health issues, other social commitments, unavoidable circumstances and so on. So, it is very much practical to state that one is left with more or less 10,000 days by the time he/she turns 40. How many people actually uses this crucial and non-returning time thinking about and working on the purpose of life; and performing activities that will satisfy his/her soul instead of continuously running a rat race as long as possible. There will never be an end to your duties and responsibilities for every role your are playing in this human birth, and therefore it is necessary to meditate and take actions to satisfy your soul before you lose time.
The success of one's life actually depends upon what he/she does in these 10,000 days as the majority of the remaining days of one's life (15,550 days) are spent in settling, learning and on unavoidable and unproductive tasks. Therefore, it is very important for everyone to constantly focus on this most valuable calculation of time and accordingly make changes in one's life rather than just spending days one after another. This should be done similar to how one manages other resources specially money. One will hardly find anyone who is unaware of how much money he/she possess approximately and therefore people are always mindful before spending money especially on irrelevant things. But when it comes to time, the same consciousness is hardly there and the crucial time is spent without due consideration.
The most important realization for everyone after considering the above calculation should be how much time is being spent on improving oneself, doing activities that will make a difference for good in the society rather than being addicted to browsing social media, getting involved in emotional dilemmas or unproductive matters.
Sthitapragya Diaries encourages its readers to conduct a small exercise daily which will act as the seed for living a productive life. At the end of every day, evaluate how the entire day was spent, that is, how the last 24 hours were utilized by you. You will certainly find few hours or minutes spent on activities that could be avoided. Start making a list of such activities that do not help you in any manner and try to remove them from your daily schedule. Instead, inspire yourself to start spending more and more time (that is remained after fulfilling your basic duties and responsibilities) reviewing your life, considering improvements you need to make in your life, performing activities you like but never have time to do, performing even small tasks which can impact the society in a good way and so on.
The ultimate goal should be to increase spending maximum number of hours and days of human life not only on productive matters but also such that an impact is made by you even though small for the betterment of the society which will give you a strong feeling of satisfaction and ultimately help you in not just running a rat race throughout your life.
Don't forget to comment and provide your feedback on this post and to tell us if this post was useful to you.
Beautiful