"Life! The only thing you can do about it is to live it. Live life!" I shared this thought yesterday on my WhatsApp status and a long-time friend and mentee asked: Na so? What if it becomes difficult to live it?
The following was my response: Are you not living life in any condition? Do you not live life as you see it? Or would you rather take your own life when the toughness is actually meant to help you to dig into yourself and come up with the treasure buried within?
What do snails do at the height of the dry season? What do they do in anticipation of drought? What do fish do when the river dries up? What do trees do when the rains cease when there is no more nourishment from the rains? What do they resort to?
What lessons do these teach us if we are truly the students of nature that we are meant to be?
Snails hibernate throughout the dry season. They secrete a cyst around their opening and bury themselves in the earth throughout the duration of drought.
When rivers get dried during the dry season when the rains cease, fish bury themselves in the sand deep beneath the river and there they hibernate till the rains return. They know that's the season and they are that compliant. But are we as humans?
In anticipation of drought, trees send their roots deeper down the water bed. They stay that way till the approach of the wet season or rains, when they smell the scent of water signalling the approach of water supply in the new season.
The benefit of the action of sending their roots deeper down is that their roots become firmly established in the earth. They become more firmly rooted.
If these creatures are this compliant with nature and they apply themselves to same as seasons change, how come man lost it so much he does not even know his bearing anymore? Man is totally lost.
What are the benefits of challenges? At this point, my friend said: "So challenges have their benefits? The people need more knowledge." And then, I ventured further.
People perish for lack of knowledge. Don't we perish from not knowing what we should know? Don't we fail when we refuse to practise what we should, or we do it wrongly and not based on instruction? Don't we waste because of our ignorance of ourselves and our environment which we have been given to nurture and maintain? Man's biggest problem is one of lack of awareness, both of self and others.
Challenges are for benefits, not harm. And even when wealth or goods increase, it is not for the one who created or produced them. It is for the benefit of others. This is the hard reality we run away from, and it is the reason we are limited and less of what we should be.
We have completely missed the true essence of life. As tough as life is today, what should a purpose driven person in connection with the Code of Life do? He or she must live now in the service of others in the use of their total resources and the result is that they will not suffer the lack of anything.
As people complain, a person of purpose is not adversely affected because he or she is conscious of what his role is--to live life in the service of others. In service, we are often replenished and renewed because we are likened to a flowing river that holds no dirt or debris.
Service is in sacrifice and commitment to the cause of nourishment of life for others, but this value is preceded by a constant self-development over a period of time. You prepare yourself for service and that requires a mentality wired towards a certain purpose or definite chief aim.
My friend retorted: "Mysteries of life. The mystery of service to others." To this I said: Life is not a physical thing. Life is in the unseen, the very reason it is mysterious. Life lives in the unseen and manifests itself in the fruit we bear.
The fruit helps us to evaluate the quality of life or the kind of life it is, whether it is life or death, or light or darkness, for the light in you can be darkness, telling that the life in you can be death for there are some that live, yet are dead.
The life we have is to be used in the service of others. This is the life that is well lived for the purpose for which it was given. Outside this, there is no life. What we actually have is otherwise.
Let me end this on this note with a thought shared by Imam Alli. He says, "Be like the flower that gives its fragrance even to the hand that crushes it." This is the purpose of the life we receive.
We are crushed to give value. The orange and sugarcane release their juice through crushing and squeezing. Until you are able to live a life of sacrifice for others, your life is not meaningful.
