It is true that we only live once. We get but one life. So,
must we do whatever we want to do, and not care about the world? Should we throw caution to the wind, forget
the world, break rules, and not care about a single thing?
Look at it from this point of view. Is our life ours to call
our own? Think about it. Did we come into this world of our own accord? Did we
learn what we know, ourselves? The answer is no. Our parents brought us into
the world. They taught us everything they knew, and more. Every step we took,
they walked along. Every time we fumbled and fell, they picked us up. Our life
has been their life since the moment they took our whimpering mass in their embrace.
Our story has been theirs; our troubles their bane and our happiness their joy.
‘It’s my life and I’ll do what I want to do.’ Does this
sound right, then? I mean, are we not thinking at all when we say that?
And it’s not just our parents whose story we’ve been part
of. We owe so much to so many people. Everything we do affects people who care
about us. How, then, can we be so selfish as to not care about how our actions
would affect them? I mean, you just cannot just get up and leave one day;
decide that you want to do something and forget about people who love you,
while doing it. No man is an island. Our life is a patchwork of stories knitted
together at the seams; sometimes overlapping. If one patch is taken out, the patchwork will
be incomplete. There’ll be a gaping hole through which cold air will enter and
ruffle all the other patches.
So it’s almost evident that things we do affect others. We
owe our lives to others and should think about them when we plan to act. Our
life has been granted to us to fulfill certain karmic balances, and fulfill
them we must. That does not mean that we should stop living and not do anything
that others object to. Of course, they can be wrong too and, anyway, we cannot
let others control our life. We must indulge ourselves and make our lives
large. The right thing is to find a middle path. Convince others that something makes us happy
and if they care about us, they’ll agree. The world will say a lot of things;
we must know what the right thing to do is.
Because doing what we want might be a great way to live our life,
but only a life lived for others is a life worth living.