Live and let live.

I want you to spend some time doing what I'm about to tell you. 5 minutes. 10 minutes. Some amount of time every day doing this. It is to introspect. To question certain things, both about yourself, and whatever brought you to the state you currently are in and made you who you are now.

Let's begin explaining this with this photo. Look at how monkeys exhibit mischief in almost every one of their actions. Be it the way they look out for lice on each other's heads, the way they jump on to each other and trigger them and get into a quarrel which is often hilarious to watch, the thing that's common among all of their actions is that they don't resist the flow. For us, civilized behaviour limits us to certain courses of action and regards other actions as unacceptable and indecent. That leaves out a lot of fun behind. We don't enjoy a lot of things in life. The small mischiefs which civilization has forbidden are those that have the most joy in them.

Now, what do we do to enjoy more of the life that we're gifted with? We can begin by asking some questions to ourselves, the first of them being, 'What is the purpose in life?'. The question carefully says 'life', not 'our life'. As Carl Sagan rightly put it, we all long to have a purpose. Every day, we seek comfort in achievements. We seek comfort in realizing some purpose. Why is it that we rely on the existence of something to make us happy? Why not enjoy living itself? Why not enjoy the freedom of absence of any purpose? I mean, when we don't have a purpose, our mind is free to wander. Free to think, free to question, free to agree and disagree. We come up with new ideas and philosophies when we let our mind wander. We discover new things about ourselves. But when there's a purpose or a mission in our life, we restrict our vision, our thoughts, our debates, our ideas and ultimately, our life to just the mission. We end up not enjoying a lot of things in life. We end up neglecting a lot of fun because they seem irrelevant to our mission. Why is it that we run towards things which most people call good? Instead of running behind benchmarks and targets all day, why not spend some time appreciating the beauty of things like faults, mistakes, imperfections and stuff? Who said that there's beauty only in discipline? Why can't there be beauty in mischief?

Let's take another perspective on this. We live in a planet which is brimming with life in every corner, in myriad varieties. But our planet is among the several trillion that exist. Isn't it special enough that our Earth was adorned with this jewel called life? Why is it that life has to have a purpose always? Why can't simply enjoying life be a fruitful purpose? Why do we always look at everything as a process which yields something at the end? Why can't we look at things as journeys with no destination? Why do we look at things as either good or bad and not as they are? I mean, good and bad both exist in this world that was created by some force beyond our understanding, so who are we to eliminate bad completely?

Such questions and thoughts occur naturally when you let your mind wander without constraints and undue pressure. I hope that you readers realize how gifted we are with life itself. I hope you start enjoying and more importantly, embracing all aspects of our life- good and bad. I hope you live life to the fullest.