Living in the moment
A man loved his late wife, who, in turn, loved animals. He lived with his little team in a small town and put in a lot of effort to create a zoo. His son, however, felt disappointed by his father’s passion and neglected. He assumed that, instead of grieving his wife’s death, his father was focusing on building a zoo that required heavy financial investments, which he could ill-afford. The government had to provide several layers of approval for the zoo to become operational.
The son, instead of seeing his father’s love for his late mother, was caught up in his own conclusions about how love should be experienced and expressed. He believed that being sad about his mother’s loss was the best way to remember her. However, his father expressed his love not just through sorrow, but by fulfilling his late wife’s dreams, which was a more positive dimension in the expression of love.
In our lives, too, don’t we often see that people are caught up in their own conclusions and are not free to see other dimensions of life? During the inauguration of the zoo, they anxiously awaited with the hope that people would turn up. However, as it rained heavily, no one showed up for the event, and they felt disappointed. The son then ran out and discovered that a large tree had fallen across the road, blocking the path.
The whole team quickly sprang into action, helping visitors climb over the fallen tree and walk into the zoo. It turned out to be a fun and adventurous way to enter. Seeing many people finally visiting, they felt a sense of joy. In one conversation, a team member, a young girl, asked, ‘Do we love animals more, or people?’ She then answered, ‘It’s people, because if they hadn’t come, we would have been very disappointed.’
The father put in so much effort to make the zoo a reality, and despite several financial difficulties, he was able to realise what he believed to be his true love. But did he enjoy the process? If he had not enjoyed the journey of creating the zoo and only reserved his joy for the end result, would that have been wise living?
One should enjoy both the process and the result. However, people’s minds are often fixated on the outcome, causing them to miss the process. What truly impacts life is the ‘actuality’ of the moment. One’s mind should learn to enjoy the present moment, and that is ‘actual living’. Unfortunately, we often live by concepts. We operate from an ideal, and only when that ideal is realised we experience joy. When it doesn’t happen, we feel pain. Life, however, is a journey of the moment.
We struggle to build a house, make more money, or earn name and fame. In the process, we struggle, and upon reaching our goal, we feel happiness. However, when we die, we leave all these behind, and we will only be remembered in passing, perhaps in someone’s memory or symbolically, through a portrait. But our soul’s journey unfolds in the present moment. Therefore, what is truly important is the joy of the moment.
Join Swami Sukhabodhananda’s three-day residential retreat; Existential Laboratory (E-Lab) along with the Mahabaleshwar Yatra on February 6,7 and 8 in 2025.
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