A Life Taken for Granted

Life is good. Life is rotten. Life’s fun. Life’s a b****. We all go through a roller-coaster of emotions about life in our limited time on this third rock from the sun.

“Life is difficult” – is the first sentence of the book ‘The Road Less Traveled’, by M. Scott Peck, a timeless classic on personal growth. Just three words, but a profound statement.

I stumbled upon another perspective of life rather abruptly.

I realized recently, from indulging in an activity hitherto never undertaken in my short existence, how we generally take our lives for granted. It was my first descent into deep waters with a hose in my mouth attached to a cylinder of compressed air. Yes – it was my first scuba dive.

The numero uno rule in scuba diving is :
“NEVER FORGET TO BREATHE”

Breathing is something we do not even think of while on terra firma. But when you are in an unfamiliar environment under water, your body and mind are suddenly shocked by the alien territory, and you become acutely aware of breathing. That you have to breathe through your mouth, as your nose is blocked shut by the mask, only adds to the feeling of mortal peril.

As you are descending down to the depths, the ears start to hurt, and you have to keep pressing your nose and breathe out in order to ‘pop’ your ears. All of us have experienced this, whether while swimming or climbing mountains, and we have rid ourselves of the feeling merely by gulping our saliva. But while scuba diving, this ‘equalization’ of air pressure inside your Eustachian canals becomes vital for survival under a mountain of water.

Then, suspended in the liquid world, your body goes wobbly and your arms and legs start going in all directions in a rather comical way. Balancing your head, torso and other parts of your skeleton is a whole new skill to be learnt inside the blue planet.

There are many other facets of scuba-diving experiences which I will talk about in my later article, but now I just want to say that I started appreciating the very mundane things of life the moment I pulled myself back to the safety of solid earth above. Let me hasten to add here that scuba diving was my dream come true, and I found it really exciting, even though I might have been a little fearful. But, boy, was I glad to breathe ‘normally’ and walk ‘straight’ after the deep dive into the salty water ! My ears still ached a little, as if reminding me of the unannounced ordeal that I had just put them through.

Sufficiently jolted by the happening, I began to have a growing sense of awareness that I had been taking a lot of things in life for granted. I was immediately thankful to the scuba dive which brought about this rupture with the world that I had known till that time.

To begin with, we all take our mother’s love for granted (or for that matter father’s love). The affections and caring of our spouse in the small little things that they do for us go mostly unnoticed. The silent adoration and unquestioned trust that our children bestow upon us slip under the radar. In other words, our families are the first victims of our short shrift.

We take our liberty for granted, which was earned with the ultimate sacrifice of our brave freedom-fighters and is sustained by the sweat and blood of our armed forces. The small comforts of modern life like electricity, clean water, a warm bed to sleep in, the humble refrigerator, the ubiquitous kitchen stove or the plain pop-up toaster – all go barely noticed, let alone appreciated. A child’s laugh, the gentle fluttering of a flower, a raindrop winding down a window pane, the beauty of a sunrise, the warmth of a hug - are at once dismissed as too ordinary and inane.

It is only when the ordinary things in life are taken away from us, if only very briefly, that we comprehend its importance. Try closing your eyes for a couple of minutes and go about your routine. You don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone.

It is only when we have a brush with danger that we feel lucky to be alive. It is only when the skies are dark for days that we are thankful for the sun coming out. Its only when we are famished that we enjoy our meal with relish. Water tastes like sweet nectar only when our throats are parched. Our hearts leap with unbridled joy on the mere sight of land after long hours or days on the high seas. A mere injury to our thumb makes it difficult to as much as hold a pencil in our hand, and suddenly makes us realize its importance.

There are those who think that life is just drudgery. And there are some who feel that life is a celebration. Which side are you on ?

Its your life. Go on, live it the way you want it. Zindagi na milegi dobara (with due credit to the latest Bollywood flick).


Endpiece : When you're in danger of losing a thing it becomes precious and when it's around us, it's in tedious abundance and we take it for granted as if we're going to live forever, which we're not. - John McGahern