The Transitory Nature of Life

A lot has been happening over the past few weeks that have consumed my awareness including testing positive for COVID. 

Even though I was vaccinated I got pretty sick. I could not help thinking during this time that this experience was an excellent reminder of the fragility of life. 

This is a new virus that the world is learning about and many have reacted in different ways as a result of being infected. Many, unfortunately, have not survived it. I was open to the fact that I could be one of them.

I had friends say to me, “You’ll be fine!” My response to them was, “How do you know? What is your statement based on? Though the percentage of someone that has been fully vaccinated dying is very small it is not zero. You and I could be a part of this small number. It is fear that causes us to think that we will not be part of this small percentage of people that could die even after being vaccinated.”

Getting COVID was the perfect opportunity to reassess everything, and I mean everything, in my life. Many people waste the precious opportunity to learn and grow from the experiences that they have in life. Most prefer for the challenging experiences in life to pass by and be a distant memory in the past. 

I prefer to take an alternative approach. If I am going through this experience, and especially if it is intense, then it is the perfect opportunity for me to ask myself what lessons I can learn from this. That is only the first step. The next step is integrating those learnings into my life to create positive change. 

When a person is going through an intense experience in life, they often have strong convictions of living a different and better way when they are out of that experience they are having. Despite this conviction, more often than always, when the pain subsides the desire to live a different way of life ebbs away with the pain and people default back to who they are. 

As I reassessed everything in my life I asked myself a few questions. Can I be clearer of my priorities in life? Who and what is important to me that I have not been focusing on? And if I survive this, what would I do differently? How would I leverage this experience to make it a catalyst for living a more profound life?

The burden of responsibility is on me to create the change that I seek in my life. 

The South Indian weaver-sage, Tiruvalluvar, so eloquently shared over 2,200 years ago the following, “Though it seems a harmless gauge of time, to those who fathom it, a day is a saw steadily cutting down the tree of life.” Nothing like getting a deadly virus to help you realize the profoundness of this statement.

When you have an inner realization that life is truly transitory in nature and finite, then and only then will you do something about creating the change you see for your life. 

Life truly is a precious gift. Are you clear of this and of how you can live the most amazing life you can?