Experience It

Chapter 1

Life: The Role of Necessities and Adjustments

Content first, language next.

Don’t judge a person by their looks. Judge a person by their behavior/thinking. Likewise, don’t judge a book by its cover/language. Give importance to its content rather than language. I’ve shared my best thoughts in this book minding content. Please ignore any grammatical errors. Thank you!

1.1 What is Life? Experience the Definition of Life

What actually is life ? What makes us happy?

Earning handful of money, having a beautiful wife/husband and having property? That’s it?

Then why we have to face so many troubles to achieve just the three of our major desires? They are very easy to write—just a few words, but each has a huge impact on our lives. So, let me tell you the actual meaning of life and the reasons why we face problems in our lives—in my language.

Whether we agree or not, life is a mix of ups and down. Search for someone whose life has only positives or only negatives, or, search for someone who is completely happy or completely sad throughout his/her life. You will soon realize that it will be hard to find such humans. Why even bother about such a long duration (a whole life time)? Let us simply consider a week and see if the so-called the happiest person or the wealthiest person is happy the whole week. You will come to realize that all the days in the considered week will not be the same for them. Though they seem to be wealthy, though they seem to have comforts and a pleasure/royal life, they do have plenty of problems—more than the combined problems of yours and mine. One day (or say one hour) will be good and the subsequent day (or the subsequent hour) might turn out to be bad. This phenomena of ‘mixture of opposite qualities’ is very true and is comparable to the combo of success and failures, good and bad, happiness and distress etc. This is not just for the happiest persons or the wealthiest persons. This is applicable for everyone on this planet.

Often, we believe that we are the most haunted ones on this earth—haunted by bad luck, misfortune etc. The problem is not because of our actual problems, but because of our negative thinking. We assume that we have so much troubles in our life than the rest. We curse our fate and blame the God (or parents or even ourselves) claiming that all bad have been happening to us.

Regardless of the poverty status, every human encounters both positives and negatives in their life. Even a newly developed infant in the womb of a mother has to undergo both pains and pleasures—right from the moment the child formation begins. So, precisely speaking, our troubles have taken birth the moment we took birth.

Our troubles are like our siblings.

Only when bad is present—we strive for good. Only when there is a complete darkness—we feel the need for light. So, negatives in our life are needed (I can say they are must) in order to appreciate the positives and the good. This is the true nature of life. The person who appreciate his/her problems is the one who is the wisest among his/her surroundings. Look around you and see the lives of billionaires and celebrities. Though they appear joyful as if they enjoy a luxurious life, they too have many pains in their life, which are not generally revealed to the outside world. We should realize this whenever we tend to compare our lives with theirs’. They too face issues related to family, life threat, marriage, health, peace of mind...the list goes on.

While the poor have one kind of problems, the rich have different kind of problems. At the end of the day, if you weigh the impact of the effects due to negatives in both the lives of poor as well as rich, you will see the balance to be leveled or sink down on the rich side. This is just one example distinguishing poor and rich. The same is applicable to any scenario. Life for everyone involves dualities (good and bad, success and failures etc.). Experience both! One who learns/adopts to both the situations is the one who had actually learned to lead a true life.

Humans are considered to be advanced and brainy compared to animals and other living creatures. One reason could be because humans have the ability to tackle problems. When humans can build structures and machines, divert massive rivers, take over the control of the most ferocious beasts, as well as travel in space (which were once regarded as dreams but are now realities), then, why can’t a human tame his 100-gram brain? A Mahout is known to tame a massive elephant while he fails to raise voice in front of his wife. In fact, he fails to have control over himself! Though he figured out how to tame elephants, he is still struggling to find a way of dealing with his own mind—the notion of emotions, problems, relations, success etc., in order to lead a happy life.

Problems arise because we tend to look for a happy life rather than a life.

We want the best to happen in our lives. We get depressed very fast when something against our expectation happens. So, if we stop expecting the outcomes...then...hola...whatever happens will not affect us! This is one way—not having much expectations. A very high expectation depresses us. If we achieve as per our expectations, we might get overwhelmed with joy—that covers our eyes with pride. We halt that moment and feel as if we had achieved everything. But, that very feeling might stop us from doing further attempts. If we enjoy, relish, and take pleasure in every small achievement, we may not find space for further progress in life. On the flip side, if we take each success as just small steps to achieve a big success, and if we feel like the small achievements are nothing and we don’t have to stop there, then, we will come across success every day. Trust me, this works. This had worked for me and for many. So, the thumb rule is

After every achievement, don’t party or celebrate! Motivate yourself and assume that the achievement is nothing but just a beginning. Keep moving.

If you have this attitude—not appreciating success every time, even failures will appear to be the same to you. You won’t get disturbed by the failures. After all, your attempts will fetch you some experience—the greatest ingredients that leads to a successful life. Thus, the general life experiences can be categorized as follows:

A problem will come. The subject will face it. Sometimes the subject fails and the other times the subject wins.

Case 1: If the subject fails and learns to avoid the same scenario in the future, then he/she will step to the next level. Such a person will never encounter similar experience in the future.

Case 2: Had the case of winning and the subject considered that as a big achievement, then the subject might stay at the same level and would not get motivated for further progress.

Case 3: Had the case of winning and the subject had not considered that as a big achievement but had targeted for future growth, then he/she would be able to rise the ladder of success.

Case 4: If the subject fails and in future if he/she faces the same scenario and does the same mistake, then he/she will descend the ladder instead of staying there or rising up.

Case 4 is the worst of all as it leads to stepping down (lowering the level) of the subject. Case 3 and case 1 denotes the best experience that one can ever exhibit. The two cases indicate the positive nature of the person. Case 2 is when the subject is over-excited with the achievement in a way that he/she forgets to aim for the future targets, stopping their growth at the same level.

If you appreciate the realities of the four cases, then you have understood the value of being positive and deterministic in life. A successful man exhibits either case 1 or case 4 and an unsuccessful man falls under the categories of case 2 and/or case 3.

A successful man is successful because he is not moved/affected by the present situation—be it good or bad.

1.2 Experience the Real Purpose of Life

Regardless of the outcome (success or failure), every experience in life is to make us ready for what follows it. Persons who appreciate the core reasons behind the happenings in life and applies that for their future problems will grow fast in their life. Soon, they will turn a legend! This is the way of successful people— learn and improve from mistakes !

Successful people are hard at heart; in the sense, they digest the failures easily. In fact, they welcome failures for they find pleasure in learning from them. Every failure is a boon to the achievers. They derive advantages out of their failures and utilize their experiences to tune their life, thereby becoming a role model to many people. We often point at someone and say: she is great, he is a legend, he is insane etc. Did you ever realize what made them great, legend, or insane? —That’s their never give up attitude. That’s their self-confidence. And, that’s their attitude of moving forward without fear—by not getting affected by the stumbling blocks on their path.

Successful people utilize their stumbling blocks and turn them into stepping stones. That’s just a matter of perception. How they perceive and how we perceive makes the difference. And that difference is why we became followers and they became the people to be followed. The way we believe, the way we see/perceive things, and our motivation will tune our lives. Remember,

Great people are not born by birth! They are made with time!

Had the case Michel Jackson had a son, it’s not necessary that his son should be another Michel Jackson. In fact, the probability of his son fit for music might just be 50%. The point is— ‘talents are developed and tuned with time.’ People won’t take birth with so called by-birth-talents. Our growth and psychological changes depend on the environment in which we were raised, our parents (guardians), friends, and most importantly on how we take/perceive things.

1.3 Story 1: The God’s Mistake

Long ago, when the God was set to start the creation, he decided to create four planets. The first two planets were planned such that in one world only men were made to take shape and in the other world only women were made to take shape. The idea of the God was to prevent problems in the future. He thought that an all-woman world would maintain peace. Likewise, he believed that a world with only men would help in preventing complications. The creation occurred and the two separate planets were under operation.

Meanwhile, his creation of the other two planets happened such that in one planet he made the demigods (godly men) to occupy while he allotted the other planet to the demons. The very idea of his creation was that since the demigods were all in the same planet, the goodness of the demigods would multiple exponentially—thereby flourishing peace at a rapid pace. At the same time, since the demons were all put in one planet and since they can’t meet the good guys, they would neither create any problems nor quarrel with each other. Thus, even the fourth world would remain in harmony as per the God’s expectation.

After he created the worlds, he went into a trance state. Two decades passed and God once wished to check the status of the four planets. Until then, he didn’t bothered checking the condition expecting that the four planets would be filled with peace. In order to confirm, he made a visit to the first two planets. To his dismay, in both the planets, peace was not observed. Men got fed up of seeing men everywhere. They were all bored and weren’t happy. They couldn’t identify the purpose of their lives. Since reproduction couldn’t happen, the number of men drastically reduced. The whole world was filled with sadness, dissatisfaction and blamings. God was shocked to see the same situation in the planet of women. They too were unhappy seeing women everywhere. They often ended up fighting with each other and their number too reduced because of no chance of reproduction.

A worried God then moved to see the conditions on the other two planets. In the planet assigned to the demigods and since only good men were present everywhere, none of them needed to show their goodness. The good thing was that there were no sign of badness and so they didn’t got the opportunity to utilize their goodness. Ahead of the God’s expectations of the goodness being multiplied, the world of demigods stayed at the same level with no improvement on peace. On the flip side, the conditions on the demon’s planet also turned out to be unexpected. Since the demons couldn’t find any good men to torture, they started quarreling among themselves to satisfy their sadistic and egoistic behavior. This created a havoc in the planet and un-satisfaction was seen everywhere.

A distressed God returned back to his adobe feeling miserable. He understood his blunder of assigning separate planets to each group. After several days of thinking, he finally came up with a new idea. According to his plan, he put all the men and the women in one planet. Likewise, he put all the demigods and the demons in one single planet. He understood that men will not be happy without women and vice versa. Likewise, goodness is visible and prominent mostly when badness comes into picture.

The value of goodness is recognized mostly when there is a need for it (due to the presence of bad).

The supreme God realized: ‘since the planet of demigods had no bad men, they couldn’t get an opportunity to showcase their goodness. All their talents got hidden and became useless. Therefore, the heroes weren’t needed.’

Further deliberation made him implement his new idea. After the allocations, he returned back to his adobe and instead of waiting for some decades, he monitored their progress every now and then. In the planet of men and women, couples were formed. They found satisfaction living with each other. Reproduction took place that gave rise to new offsets. Thus, life sustained. In the second planet, since bad men (demons) got the chance of tormenting demigods (good men), the demigods too utilized their skills to oppose them. In order to save their race, they learned new methods and techniques of countering the demons. Soon, many heroes emerged out (from the tribe of good men) and their goodness and skills became recognizable. Mortals and immortals found a way to sustain their life.

God became happy because they figured out the actual reasons for their existence.

He finally made the first planet as earth and added many life elements like animals, insects etc. He distributed the qualities of good and bad among humans such that some would get good qualities while others would exhibit bad nature, though he gave chance to everyone to choose one of the two paths as per their wish. In addition, he included the symptoms of both good and bad in the lives of each and every individual on the earth— thereby allowing them to learn the true meaning of life apart from knowing their hidden internal potencies. That’s how life kept sustaining—giving chance to the humans to enhance their skills and become heroes by overcoming the bad.

Relevant points and lessons learnt from the story

Only good or only bad has no value. Both can’t happen separately. They maintain duality.

The goodness of a person is recognized mostly during bad times.

Similarly, your skills are invoked during bad times. It’s better to face some problems in order to unearth your problem-solving skills and also to unearth your hidden talents. Experience them!

Extreme of only one thing is always dangerous. Expecting only extreme of one thing (whether it is good or bad, happy or sad etc.) is not advisable. Be balanced.

To realize your hidden skills, you better face some problems. You won’t find solutions unless you know the problems. Necessity is the mother of creativity.

God realized that only good or only bad had no use (no purpose). Therefore, he created the world with both so that one would know what the problem would look like; upon which he/she will try to come up with a solution by upgrading self.

God has been giving you several chances to unearth your skills and to help you become a dependable person. He is trying to make you a role model and a hero. Do you wish to