He worked for 15 years in that organization and was with them from the very start… And now he has no job? A few months back I met a person in almost end 50s who was looking for a job – as he had his daughter studying abroad and he could not afford it even after having worked for 30+ years and had been let go at a decently senior position at the end… As my ex boss told me, the taller the tree the more winds they face… Its not easy to sustain at the top… Everyone wants that job and whoever manages the top tries to find the next cheapest person to do the job… Hence earning more is also a curse… What do you then do with a lifestyle you have upgraded based on your current income? How do you live with the burden of your responsibility in such an unpredictable scenario?
He was a very happy guy… cheerful, full of life… a foodie who had a sweet tooth and a lazy body for exercise… overweight, high BMI, higher cholesterol levels… blah blah blah…. all this to him were normal for his race and to him more of scams of medical companies to sell more medicines… he was fine and nothing to worry about… And it served him well for 38 years of his life… And then one day he went for routine annual check up and he was told of a possible tumor in his liver and certain case of diabetes… And the thoughts of his young kids and his wife kept him awake for the first time in his life… All the young people who had heart attacks and cancers came fleeting to his mind…. it went from nothing bad can happen to me to how do I survive through this… How does one survive through a scare when life can be so uncertain?
She was living a dream of a life – a loving husband from 10 years of marriage, a cute little daughter… pleasant in-laws… a satisfying job… and then one day, she found that her husband was having affairs on his business travels… she did not know if it was worse finding out or the fact that it did happen… the questions about her own self worth… was she inadequate in bed? Was she lacking in emotional support… how come such a caring father and understanding husband be a cheater… how will she now continue living a life without pain, remorse and regrets?
What the above true life events have in common is fragility of our current life… There is a saying that it is a blessing when we have something to lose… and for us it does not take long to convert that blessing to a curse… and that is because we forget that anything and everything in our life is momentary and transient… and the issue we have is not in the enjoying of our blessing… for there is no meaning of life just in pain without satisfaction… Every moment should be lived to ones content… the issue however is in either:
- Wanting to ensure we can control it to continue or/and
- In disregarding it / take it for granted that it will continue forever or/and
- Becoming so hooked on to it, that we cannot enjoy the next phase / moment i.e. our inability to move on happily
The answer to the questions, the challenge of being able to live happily with fragility, hence lies in able to overcome the 3 pitfalls given above.
Buddhism says that everything in this world is momentary and transient – even us / our soul. Bhagvad Gita says that the one who is Sithtapragyna – equanimous / unmoved is the most happy. Jainism says with Anekantwad that there is no single encompassing truth or reality… and with Apiragrah – detachment, we can have the ultimate pleasure. The religions of India, seem to all speak about the same thing that can help cope with the unpredictability and fragility of our life and live happily…
And you know what – most of this spiritual doctrine is preached by sage’s who have supposedly let go of worldly relationships… Try being single mindedly focused on achieving something in life and yet be detached from it so as to be able to move on without feelings! Try not feeling any pain or joys for your loved ones whom you live for or are so intricately attached as part of your life. It is not easy to have your cake and eat it too.
He worked for 15 years in that organization. He had been there almost from the very start.
And now he has no job.
A few months ago, I met a person in his late 50s who was looking for a job. His daughter was studying abroad and he could no longer afford the expenses comfortably, despite having worked for more than 30 years and having reached a reasonably senior position before he was let go.
As my ex-boss once told me, the taller the tree, the more winds it faces.
It is not easy to sustain yourself at the top. Everyone wants that job. And whoever is at the top is constantly trying to find the next person who can do the same job for less.
Hence, earning more can sometimes be a curse too.
What do you do with a lifestyle that you have upgraded based on your current income? How do you suddenly adjust when the income disappears? How do you carry the burden of responsibilities that you have accumulated precisely because you were successful?
Perhaps that is one of the strangest contradictions of modern life.
The more successful we become, the more we have to lose.
He was a very happy guy. Cheerful, full of life. A foodie, with a sweet tooth and a lazy body when it came to exercise. Overweight, high BMI, higher cholesterol levels… blah blah blah.
All of this, to him, was normal. Normal for his age, normal for his family, normal for his race. And perhaps, in his mind, a lot of it was just another scam by medical companies to sell more medicines.
He was fine. Nothing to worry about.
And it had served him well for 38 years of his life.
Until one day, during his routine annual check-up, he was told there was a possible tumour in his liver. He was also diagnosed with diabetes.
And suddenly, the thoughts of his young children and his wife kept him awake.
All those stories of young people having heart attacks. People getting cancer. People dying unexpectedly.
They came fleeting into his mind.
It went from nothing bad can happen to me to how do I survive if something bad has happened to me?
How does one survive a scare when life suddenly reminds you how uncertain it is?
Then there was her.
She was living what seemed like a dream life. A loving husband after ten years of marriage. A cute little daughter. Pleasant in-laws. A satisfying job.
And then one day she discovered that her husband had been having affairs on his business travels.
She didn’t know what was worse — finding out that it had happened, or accepting that the person she thought she knew was capable of doing it.
And then came the questions.
Was she inadequate?
Was she not good enough in bed?
Was she lacking emotionally?
Had she somehow failed him?
How could someone who was such a caring father and, in her eyes, such an understanding husband also be a cheater?
And perhaps the hardest question of all:
How do I continue living the life I had, when the life I thought I had no longer exists?
Three very different stories.
A career. A body. A marriage.
Yet all three have something in common.
The fragility of our current life.
There is a saying that it is a blessing to have something to lose.
And perhaps it is.
It is wonderful to have a family you love, a career you are proud of, money that gives you comfort, a healthy body, friends, ambitions, experiences and a life that gives you satisfaction.
The problem isn’t that we enjoy these blessings.
In fact, I would argue that there is little meaning in a life where we deliberately deny ourselves pleasure simply because pleasure may not last.
The problem is what we do in our minds with these blessings.
We make three mistakes.
First, we try to control them so that they continue.
We want to make sure our job remains secure. Our health remains good. Our marriage remains happy. Our children remain safe. Our financial position remains comfortable.
But much of life is simply not within our control.
Second, we mistake what is true today for what will remain true tomorrow.
We start treating our current circumstances as if they are the natural order of things.
I have this job.
I have this money.
I am healthy.
My wife loves me.
My children are happy.
Therefore, this is how my life is.
But is and will always be are two very different things.
And third, perhaps the most painful, we become so attached to a particular version of our life that when it changes, we don’t know how to inhabit the next version.
We don’t just lose the job.
We lose the future we had imagined because of that job.
We don’t just receive a medical diagnosis.
We lose the assumption that I am one of the people to whom bad things don’t happen.
We don’t just discover an affair.
We lose the story of our marriage that we had been living inside.
The event hurts.
But sometimes it is the collapse of the imagined future that hurts even more.
Buddhism speaks about impermanence — that everything that arises will eventually change, including us.
The Bhagavad Gita speaks of sthita-prajna, the person who remains equanimous, unmoved by the changing circumstances around them.
Jain philosophy gives us anekantavada — the recognition that no single perspective can completely encompass reality — and aparigraha, often translated as non-attachment or non-possession.
Different philosophies. Different vocabulary. Different metaphysical foundations.
And yet there seems to be a common thread.
Don’t mistake the temporary for the permanent.
Don’t expect life to remain still simply because you are comfortable with where it is today.
But here is where I struggle with the traditional idea of detachment.
Much of this spiritual doctrine was preached by sages who supposedly let go of worldly relationships, possessions and ambitions.
Try doing that while living an ordinary modern life.
Try being single-mindedly focused on building something in your career and yet being detached enough to walk away from it without feeling anything.
Try loving your wife and children deeply, living for them, worrying about them, building memories with them — and simultaneously being detached enough that their loss does not break you.
It isn’t easy.
And perhaps that isn’t even the right objective.
Maybe the answer is not detachment.
Maybe the answer is flexibility.
Not training ourselves to care less.
Training ourselves to recover better.
I don’t think we can simply decide not to feel pain.
If someone loses a job they spent 15 years building, telling them to be detached is almost insulting.
If someone is told they may have a tumour, telling them to remain equanimous doesn’t stop the fear.
If someone discovers that the person they trusted most has betrayed them, telling them that everything is transient doesn’t make the betrayal hurt any less.
The feeling comes.
What perhaps can be trained is what happens after the feeling comes.
Can we teach our minds that this is a new reality, rather than endlessly fighting the fact that the old reality is gone?
Can we learn to adapt without turning disappointment into despair?
Can we experience fear without allowing it to become our permanent state?
Can we accept that something wonderful has ended without concluding that therefore nothing wonderful can happen again?
This, to me, is a different kind of mental strength.
Not the strength of someone who is unmoved by life.
But the strength of someone who can be moved by life and still find their balance again.
Perhaps we need to exercise the mind in the same way we exercise the body.
We constantly expose ourselves to change. We remind ourselves that circumstances are temporary. We deliberately experience small disappointments, changes and uncertainties instead of insulating ourselves completely from them.
We reinforce the idea that feelings are states of mind, not permanent realities.
Fear feels permanent when we are afraid.
Grief feels permanent when we are grieving.
Anger feels permanent when we are angry.
But we know from our own lives that feelings change.
Sometimes we can even influence them — through what we think about, where we put our attention, what meaning we assign to an event and what we choose to do next.
Perhaps that is the kind of flexibility we need to develop.
Not I will never lose this.
But if I lose this, I will find a way.
Not nothing bad will happen to me.
But something bad may happen to me, and I will deal with it.
Not my life must continue exactly as it is.
But my life will change, and I will learn to live the next version of it.
Because the truth is that fragility is not a defect of life.
It is life.
The people we love will change. Our bodies will change. Our careers will change. Our children will grow up. Our circumstances will shift in ways we cannot predict.
And sometimes, unexpectedly, something we never imagined will become one of the best parts of our lives.
We cannot build a life that cannot be shaken.
That life doesn’t exist.
Perhaps what we can build instead is a mind that can be shaken without being permanently broken.
The goal is not to stop holding on.
It is to know that when life eventually lets go of something we are holding, we can grieve it, remember it, be grateful that we had it — and still be able to reach out and hold something else.
Because perhaps the real skill in living happily with a fragile life is not learning how to prevent change.
It is learning how to change with it.
Inside VG... 