Alright! This seems like a good thing to write about on the first day of a new year.
A new year is celebrated around the world with great joy and fanfare. It is a marker for possible change for the better, a time to somehow put aside the inevitable difficulties of the year that has just gone by, in the hope that the next one would usher in something different, perhaps joyful. A friend was saying apparently there were some celestial configurations last year that made things rather difficult for many people! I hope the stars are more benign in 2025.
I am not a fan of new-year resolutions because they are an artificial construct and they are rarely sustained beyond the initial enthusiasm. As if one is going to suddenly make a change because the date rolled over. Why was it difficult to make that change 24 hours earlier? Or a week before? What is this desire in us for seemingly auspicious moments to begin things?
Yet, interestingly, one must start sometime!
Of course, the old bard did observe astutely:
There is a tide in the affairs of men. Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.
– William Shakespeare
But does every January bring such a tide? Or are these opportunities available at other moments of our lives too that we somehow miss?
This year, I did make a list though. In my defence, I wrote it two days before and I started on it right away, so it wouldn’t feel like a new-year resolution! Ha!
It’s titled “For 2025 and beyond” with the intent that these things are not meant to be flash-in-the-pan, quick fixes, but larger, deeper movements, that I intend to take forward for the rest of my life. The list looks like this:
For 2025 and beyond:
Strengthen my body
Sharpen my mind
Broaden my horizons
Deepen my understanding
Challenge my limitations
Consolidate my finances
Express my creativity
Shift my energyLive intentionally!
I see these as forming the foundation for my time ahead. I imagine each of them would be as relevant 20 years from now as they are today.
For me, the miracle doesn’t lie in making the list or in accomplishing it, but in the very idea that I am thinking of a “time ahead”. It wasn’t always so.
After my brother’s suicide in July 2023, death was an urgent question that needed answering. I had lost my parents earlier but their passing on was easier to anticipate and prepare for (not necessarily live with), given their illnesses and aging.
The death of my brother was a different matter. It came out of nowhere (as he intended) and at a time when I thought we had many years of friendship ahead of us. Well, I was not consciously thinking of the time we had, of course, it was an assumption, a natural one I imagine! And when the assumption came undone, it hit me hard.
As I have written earlier, there was a phase where I felt that I would follow Rajesh’s path, that there was an unwritten (familial) script here that I would end up acting out, that it would be like a self-fulfilling prophecy, something beyond my control, that I would watch myself play out the same script as my brother did.
I am not there anymore. Far from it. I have come to love life again and not just that, I have come to believe that I am unbreakable. That, whatever else life might throw at me, there is nothing that can break me. That might sound arrogant but it is not meant to be and it does not feel so. It is more a statement of fact.
I am not saying life will never be difficult again or that other sad things may not happen. In the future, might there be events that bring further sorrow and pain? Oh yes, definitely. Sure, that is likely to happen – after all, that is life – one cannot escape that. But would they break me, to think of suicide? No, that’s not happening. Not because I have not been tested enough but because I have been to the brink and sat there for a while until it lost its pull and went away. For good. I like to think of this sense of ‘unbreakability’ as my greatest accomplishment. It may not mean much to others, but it means the world to me to have discovered this rather quiet voice within that says yes to life, in spite of everything.
There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.
– Albert Camus
In The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus tackles this problem:
The central concern of The Myth of Sisyphus is what Camus calls “the absurd.” Camus claims that there is a fundamental conflict between what we want from the universe (whether it be meaning, order, or reasons) and what we find in the universe (formless chaos). We will never find in life itself the meaning that we want to find. Either we will discover that meaning through a leap of faith, by placing our hopes in a God beyond this world, or we will conclude that life is meaningless. Camus opens the essay by asking if this latter conclusion that life is meaningless necessarily leads one to commit suicide. If life has no meaning, does that mean life is not worth living? If that were the case, we would have no option but to make a leap of faith or to commit suicide, says Camus. Camus is interested in pursuing a third possibility: that we can accept and live in a world devoid of meaning or purpose.
https://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/sisyphus/summary/
My life at that phase felt like that of Sisyphus. Devoid of meaning. Pushing the boulder up only to see it roll down, and start all over again. Day after day.
It was during this time that I came upon a book that helped me see Camus’ conclusion: despite what seems like an eternal punishment of meaningless existence for Sisyphus, through the act of ultimate rebellion – of accepting his circumstances completely – “one must imagine Sisyphus happy.”
Despite all the punishment the almighty Gods may lay upon him, they cannot decide what he feels about it. His internal response is entirely up to him, and in accepting his fate for what it is, freeing himself from the desire for his circumstances to be different, and thus stumbling upon happiness, he defies the Gods and denies them the pleasure of seeing him truly suffer.
The book that helped me come to this understanding was Yes to Life, In Spite of Everything.
Victor Frankl had written an earlier classic: Man’s Search for Meaning. This book – Yes to Life – is a collection of talks that tackles the question of suicide and the power of hope in the face of extremely difficult circumstances such as what he faced at the concentration camp at Auschwitz. The author reasons, in compelling ways, how even in the face of unimaginably crushing circumstances, it is possible to say yes to life. This was a deeply affirming book to read at a time of darkness and the essence of it is encapsulated for me in this passage:
There is a simple way, one would almost say a trick, to demonstrate the full extent of the responsibility with which our existence is so poignantly loaded, a responsibility that we can only face tremblingly, but ultimately somehow joyfully. For there is a categorical imperative that is also a formula of ‘acting as if’, formally similar to Kant’s well-known maxim, which goes like this: ‘Live as if you were living for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now!’
The meaning of our lives then lies in our “response-ability” to it.
The title of the book became a daily affirmation. I would wake up each morning and say into the mirror: “Yes to life, in spite of everything.” The first time I tried saying it aloud I could not complete the sentence and I ended up sobbing. It was too hard to believe its message. It felt fake.
Over time, the affirmation took effect – it gave me a thread to hold on to which became a lifeline – while I built up my courage again, slowly over time, first through chanting and then later through the deep meditations on The Direct Path.
I don’t say the affirmation aloud in front of a mirror anymore. I feel it instead in my bones. I just have to pause in the middle of the busyness of my day and think of the title – Yes to Life – to feel its truth once again. And in that moment, I find it is possible to respond differently to the challenge facing me. With a gentle acceptance of that which already is (Yes) and not in opposition to it.
On this New Year’s Day, my love for life has expressed itself through that list “For 2025 and beyond.”
In the words of Hebbel, “Life is not something, it is the opportunity for something!”
Or said differently:
What seeds would you like to plant today?
Happy New Year!
Despite all that might happen this year, I hope you will join me in saying yes to life!
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