It is a weekend. You and your spouse love to celebrate
the weekend by going on a long drive. You get down at your favorite food joint to
enjoy your brunch. Your day end is sealed by the mall and multiplex plan
wherein you do a lot of window shopping and a bit of actual shopping till you
get tired and then watch a movie.
You might also want to make plans to
chill out with friends and on some other occasions; you are attending some
social events. Apart from these activities, you also want to indulge in junk
food, you have to surf the net, you need to meet and greet some random people,
you love to hog on your favorite ice cream and you desire to get lazy and just
lie on your sofa doing nothing.
Isn’t it surprising that
unconsciously you perform so many activities in a day! You talk, you smile, you
enjoy, you breathe and most important-you live. Every moment you use almost
each of your senses. And while you are following this routine, one fine day you
meet with an accident. You are hospitalized and almost get into a vegetative
state.
Did this thought get you petrified? Indeed,
it is petrifying. God forbid this should not happen with you. However, as a
human being, we do not know what our tomorrow or even next moment will be like.
Nature can be harsh on anyone at anytime. Someone meets with an accident, someone
suffers a heart stroke, someone gets paralyzed and there are innumerable other
ways of suffering.
Still, when we are hale and hearty,
we tend to live the life recklessly. We are too engrossed in spending the days
as they come, await the next day and keep worrying and planning about it. We hardly
treasure the moment we are living in, the little joys that we are blessed with
and the untold luxuries we get to enjoy. We ignore the importance of the breath
we intake as a fit individual. We are indifferent to those countless activities
that our normal senses allow us to do.
On the contrary, we whine over those
things we do not have. We are busy comparing ourselves with others and are in
fact insulting the creation of nature. ‘I wish I had straight hair like her’,
‘I wish I was as lucky as him’, ‘My life has become boring and monotonous’; the
list of our complaints is endless. Nobody seems to be satisfied with what they
possess. To sum it up in a line, life is taken for granted by us.
I, too, am a species of this genus. I
might be leading a life which others are jealous of; loving relatives,
wonderful friends, ample of amenities and luxuries frilled to a comfortable
life. These advantages were never chalked out by me although I was enjoying
them, until one fine day. It was the day when God decided to teach me the
lesson of my life. It was the day that changed my perspective towards life. It
was the day that told me others should not repeat the mistakes made by me or
thousand others like me.
It was a day just like any other
day. I was returning home from office when I met with an accident. It was a
head injury with quite a blood loss. I was in hospital for 3 days and was later
advised complete bed rest for at least 15 days at home. The week that followed
the day of accident was horrendous. A persistent headache, a continuous drowsy
and sluggish feeling, energy level running in minus caused me to be nailed to
bed. I was given more medicines than the morsels of food I could eat at that stage,
which only made me further sick. As days advanced, I also realized that the
injury on head caused a mild jerk in my brain giving rise to minute
complications in the wiring of my body as my hearing and smelling sense were
affected. It was then that I fathomed how much is provided to us by nature but
how thankless we are for that.
Although my injury could have
counted trivial than what numerous others undergo, I felt that I had almost
seen death a couple of miles away. The moments when I was wriggling in pain in
my bed, I remembered the happy me. As if reels after reels of my life were
playing in my head contemplating on my smiles, my laughs, my mischief, my joys and
wondering how none of those things I was able to do at that instant although I
wished to. I realized they were the things that are to be cherished. Every
fraction of these moments has to be lived and enjoyed completely.
We cannot put a price tag on happiness saying
this was a small happiness or that gives me bigger happiness; for happiness in
any form is bliss. I learnt it the hard way. This will remain etched in my
heart forever. I want to carve this same message in the minds of as many people
as possible and this is a small attempt in that direction. Life is a precious
gift gifted by nature. Value it. Do not take it for granted because you get to
live only once. 