My Readables

What Do You Want to Be In 2020 – A Survivor or A Free-Soul
By Ahmad Amirali

As 2019 ends, many of us will going to reflect on how things terribly went wrong or tremendously went well for them throughout the year. Reflection is the very thing which I learned when I entered the teaching profession. However, before measuring yourself on the right and wrong scale, take a moment and think about how many hours you have spent for yourself? – Yes, for yourself. One of my previous students greeted happy new year this morning and asked me how was my year. I replied it was great and he again asked sir, how it went? Yet again I replied with the same answer – it went well. He again asked ‘Sir, how you survive this year?’ and this time I didn’t respond because this is what we do to our self every year. We simply survived every year by struggling with our problems, stress, exams, un-successful crushes, uneven work experiences, worst classroom experiences and yet after all that we again get our self-ready for the next year to repeat that ‘Survival cycle’ and the life goes on. The question is, are we living to survive or survive to live through our whole life?

Ask yourself, whether you are my student, a teenager or youth or an adult or a friend/relative, what one thing you will desperately want to learn in the coming year? What one wildest thing you want to experience in the following year? What one good deed you want to do (without your cell phones or selfies) that will put a smile on someone’s face? But sir, what about our school work, homework, home chores, office work, etc.? How can we get time to even think about these commitments which you are asking from us? These questions will always be in your mind whenever you’re going to experience something new. But then ask yourself, do you want to spend one more year being a survivor or being a free happy soul. A soul who knows, there is someone who is enjoying his/her day because of your one good anonymous deed.

Just look around you and observe what happening in the world. Everyone tries to survive a day or a week or a moment and this is merely limiting our thoughts and creativity. There is already enough chaos around us that we simply forget how to live and we started to survive. But ‘Sir, who told you that I am surviving, I still take out some times to go and watch a movie with my friend in a month or two, I still try to spend some time with my wife/children/siblings on weekends. I am not surviving; I am playing smart’. Yet, ask yourself again, are you spending time with your family and friends or you merely completing another task which was pending in your ‘day task list’? The life is simply becoming a task-sheet for many of us no matter who we are; a student, teacher, family person, office person or even a CEO of a company.

The coming year which is just an eve away, I want to make a resolution that I will not survive; instead, I will try to live every moment and share the living with my loved ones. Try to think differently for once, forget whatever happening in your life and start living. Ask yourself this evening, ‘Are you want to survive 2020 or wanna live it as a free-soul’?

Good Luck 😊