Life

In a friend’s post on facebook the other day, he wrote, “Life is a process….”.

I then commented “I think life is more like a chain of episodes, each one playing out a different part of your lifetime.”

He then replied by saying “Depending on individual, some would call it a journey”.

One of the certainties about life is, the moment we are born, we are approaching death. It’s just a matter of when.

Some might be a few months, others might take years, there are even plenty of centenarians out there!

Each part of our life plays out differently. Our childhood, our school days, college life, working adults, marriage, parenthood, etc.

In each segment, there are different arcs, different episodes of events unraveling everyday. Things that could possibly affect other events in future (or not).

I have likened life to that of episodes chain together, because I think you have to watch it in its entirety to understand the aftermath, why and how a person’s life has panned out to be the way it is. Of course, there are definitely lots of independent interesting arcs in between that could be standalone episodes.

Calling life a journey, I can imagine what it is like. For some who have strong resolutions of their life and planned them out, they might already have set out a direction of where they want to journey to. Obviously, that direction might change during the course, as we age, as we meet more people, as we change our attitudes etc. But for many, it’s probably a journey to no-where, living life as it is, enjoying it, loving it, and seeing where it will lead us many years down the road.

But calling it a process is something that I have never thought of.

Until I came across this quote:

” Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states that we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death.” —  Anais Nin 

This made me thought deeper. Well essentially, the meaning is easy to grasp. But in it’s entirety, it means we have to keep evolving and adapting, as we go through different states, and trying to deal with the situation.

After all, that’s what life is all about isn’t it? Overcoming challenges, thinking of how to deal with that obstacle, evolving from there and learning from our mistakes. 

It’s up to us how we want to define our lives. It’s a process, a journey, episodes of events, a story.

However we define it does not matter. What is important is that we have only one lifetime.

So make good use of it.