What do we live for?

Some two years ago I undertook a routine precautionary medical test at a Toronto hospital, a test that is recommended at least once every two years if you enjoy reasonable good health. The system there is that you get your results after about a week but if there is something seriously wrong the hospital or doctor will call you immediately for further consultancy in order to chart out a possible course of action.

Two days after the test, while in the shower, I received a phone call from the hospital asking me to urgently call back. When I called back, the secretary who called me had gone for lunch and had left a 10-15 minute ‘delay’ recorded message for all callers on her telephone.

In those ten minutes, my thoughts were drawn philosophically to mortality or death not necessarily with fear but more on how worthwhile a life I had lived and how many things I had planned to do that still remained undone. The thoughts came naturally and thinking back retrospectively I realised that during those ten or fifteen minutes the thought of money never came to my mind. Ironically what most human beings seek most becomes irrelevant at the time when one is facing possible death simply because one does not take one’s wealth to the next life.

What naturally crossed my mind during those few minutes were questions like, do I have anyone’s debt to settle? Have I been nice to my family as a child, father or husband? Have I honoured my religious obligations as prescribed? How have I fared as an individual in serving society at large after my family? Have I been honest in my deeds and motives and if not have I sought forgiveness from God? How will God rate me when I enter his abode?

These thoughts quickly took me to an incident where a close relative had died and I was among those who had to enter the grave for finally laying the deceased to rest. The man who died was a simple man who was contented with the basic needs of life and while he had served his family well and was survived by caring children, his wish to travel to different places around the world had remained unfulfilled. He had never wanted to serve, had no dreams of changing the world, no high-flying objectives but had preferred a low profile ‘unhappening’ existence.

As those attending the burial began putting sand on the deceased it hurt me to have lost a closed one but I wondered if the deceased had lived a worthy or worthless life? I wondered who would recall him after a few months. Perhaps no one but his immediate family and would not things have been different had he lived a more constructive life?

What if he had been a great sportsman, or a writer for a newspaper, or a social worker, or a sincere politician (if there are any!), or a great and wealthy businessman, or a qualified professional, or a religious scholar, or an activist for the poor? Would he have been remembered more? While mentally stretching my dead colleague’s simple life, a hard truth struck as the burial ceremony ended. It was that every individual is buried and forgotten at one stage after a few months or a few years or a few decades irrespective of what he or she had done in life.

When popular people die there are more people to attend the funeral but when it comes to being remembered all ultimately meet the same fate --- that of being forgotten or remembered faintly through archives that ultimately fade out as new generations begin to rule the roost. What remains is how the Almighty judges you. If you have lived life decently, religiously and honestly you are a winner and if you have done that with also sincerely sparing time for social work you are an even better winner.

When I finally got through to the hospital secretary to find out why she had called me, it turned out that she only wanted my date of birth. It was good news then but in a few years don’t we all ultimately meet the same fate? Death is inevitable and we all can make it easier for ourselves by living honestly and sincerely.