“What should I do with my life?”

When you’re young, it all seems complicated, baffling, bewildering. There are many roads, and no destinations in sight. When you’re old, life seems improbable. All the roads you took. How could anyone have known where they would meet, cross, end? And so. In all the moments of a life, there is always the question: “is this right? Am I doing the things I should be doing with my life?”

Here is my little answer.

If you’re asking, that is how you know you are making the wrong choices. When you ask, your mind is fighting your heart — but your heart sees a truer world than your mind does.

The wrong choices. What are good ones? They are very simple. They are as true for me as they are for you as they for everyone who has ever lived.

Build a home, have a family, contribute something to the world.

You don’t need to do any more, and you don’t need to do any less. What should you do with your life? Those three things. Are you going in the right direction? If you are accomplishing those three things, you are weaving together the timeless elements of a good life. That is a beautiful life, because it’s a simple and gentle life. It’s a beautiful life, because it’s a worthy and noble life. Such a life is rich in the truest ways.

We suppose that we need to conquer worlds and vanquish rivals to life lives that are rich. Nothing could be further from the truth. We overthink life. But life is simple. It’s one great truth is this: it is the blink of an eye. It will be gone before you know it. Life is many things. Ineffable, mysterious, singular. But before all those, it is evanescent. Life is short. There’s just enough time. It’s strange, isn’t it? For you and I to do the three things on my little list. No less, and no more.

Why is that?

Let’s think about life for a moment. You might say: “but the three things on your list are easy!”. Are they? If you consider them carefully, I think that you’ll see what I’ve seen. To have one often comes at the price of the rest. A successful career costs the superstar home and family. A proud home seems to cost a happy family. And a family that respects and loves one another often costs the other two.

Why is that? It’s often because we’re chasing the illusion of the thing, and not the thing itself. We’re after a McMansion to show off. But a home isn’t that. A home isn’t even a place. It is a set of genuine and enduring values, that people willingly share. We’re after a pretty face that everyone else wants to call our own. But that isn’t a family: that’s insecurity needing to be soothed. A family for some people is a tribe, for some adopted orphans, for some, their own flesh and blood — but all these are family. We’re after a successful career. But I know many, many successful people who’ve never contributed much, if anything, to the world.

We are little consumers, in our minds, conditioned from the day we are born to want the world. But deep down in our hearts, our whole being is fighting to love. The conflict between the two — wanting the world, and needing to love — is what leads us to ask: “what should I do with my life? Am I doing the right thing?”.

So these three elements of a good life are more subtle than they seem. It’s easy to be seduced by their counterfeits. But like all counterfeits, you will still always long for the real thing. Why?

These things, these components of a good and worthy life. They are like wood that we carve with our hands. That we have just enough time to carve. In that time, they take effort, care, attention. They demand what is best in us, don’t they? Dreams, rebellion, mercy, humility, grace. And love. Always love. That is why they take us somewhere little else in this life can.

They demand the best in us. When that seed flowers, that is all happiness us. We have realized what is truest in us, at last. Now we know that down in the deepest heart, we are not our fear, anger, shame, guilt, rage — we are our love, mercy, grace, beauty, nobility. How can such a life be anything other than happy? That is why the three elements of a good life lead us unerringly to happiness, meaning, purpose, resonance.

Look around. Do you see many happy faces? I don’t. I see people frowning, sweating, straining. Thinking and clinging and needing and wanting. I think that their unhappiness comes from wanting the wrong things. Things that don’t lead to happiness.

Life is simple, in the truest sense. Life is simplicity. There’s just enough time, in your few moments of breath, to build a home, have a family, and contribute something to the world. It is as if death has attuned life to a bittersweet note. At the very moment that we accomplish all these, we die.

How could it be any other way? Perhaps you want to live forever. But I know, having tasted death’s edge, that there is a reason for dying, too. It is so that life holds meaning. Live forever, have a thousand families, a thousand homes, a thousand careers. Would any of them mean anything? Would you even remember the first hundred?

The roots are there forever. The flower lasts just a season. So it is with you. When the best in you has been realized, you are ready — not to live, but to die. Life is the act of growing your garden of being. Our minds furiously deny death, they tell us we will love forever — but our hearts see death in every struggling breath we take. That is why, inside, we always know. It is when we ask what or why or how that we are making the wrong choice. The moment that we ask, mind is overcoming heart — but heart always knows that a good life is a simple life is a beautiful life.

Life and death aren’t the opposites that we think. They aren’t enemies, opposites, adversaries. They are brothers in arms. Fighting a war against time. It is we alone who can make peace. When we love, so life and death lay down their arms. Where we love, life and death meet. And time surrenders, at last.

Umair

February 2017