The Child that became me…

Often we ask ourselves a question : What is life? Why are we here? What is our purpose? Is it just to
survive, to exist without meaning or to be so full, so engrossed in it that we forget oyr inner essence.

Let us reflect on the first question. What is life? Well, we cannot define what life is, pshycologically of
course. “In biology, the science that studies living organisms, "life" is the condition which distinguishes
active organisms from inorganic matter, including the capacity for growth, functional activity and the continual
change preceding death.”

Similarly, “In philosophy and religion, the conception and nature of life varies, and offer interpretations in the
frameworks of existence andconsciousness, and touch on many other related issues, such as, ontology, value, life
stance, purpose, conceptions of God, the soul and the afterlife.”

I personally think that life is all about happiness, bound with what Hindu scriptures refer to as Karma.
Each man’s eternal quest is happiness, some work to be happy later, some work to be happy now,
without worrying about the future. But the point is, each of our actions are justified by this quest. There
is an everlasting debate on which school of thought is right. One is taught from day 1 that if we work
harder today, we may live easy tomorrow. The other takes shape gradually in minds during adolescence,
that while we worked for a better tomorrow, we were destroying what there is today, which sprouts
from the overwhelming feeling that while past has gone and the future is always uncertain, it is the
present that is still here, staring at our faces, challanging to make us believe that life is what we have
right here, not some lines in our palms.

Arunabh Nag