Aug 21, 2002, 12.00am IST
Kiran Bedi.
Our lives are a series of experiences. Although these experiences appear to be linear, actually, they are not so. We discover this when we pause to carefully reflect on them.
Life is a form of language with its own punctuation marks, much like the written language, where each punctuation mark has an unspoken meaning.
I experienced the visible language of life recently when I was down with a viral fever with a severe chest congestion. I was completely dependent upon others to even get up on my feet.
Without the care and support of my family, I would have had to be hospitalised. Because of the intensive care I received at home, I bounced back to good health within a reasonable period of time.
I went through a number of check-ups concerning my vital organs. When each one turned out to be in good shape, I felt I was re-learning and revising the lessons of life.
I’d like to share some of the lessons I was re-learning with those who are taking certain gifts of life for granted, like perhaps, I was.
Lesson number one: Good physical health is a valuable gift of nature. Position, power, status and acquisitions tend to lose their meaning if we are not blessed with energetic health. So it is important to recognise and nurture all the enabling factors which give us energetic physical health.
Lesson number two: Once we recognise that energetic physical health is the greatest possession we have, we will not go about abusing it deliberately. But by using this gift carefully and rightly, we can heighten our awareness of all that we do and find different ways of using our energy. Good health makwes us feel good; we become enabled to spread happiness all around us.
Lesson number three: With this heightened awareness, we will not readily consume anything which might hurt the system.
Basically, the realisation that good health is a precious gift will help us treat the body as a trust, and motivate us to keep it clean and pure as a temple of divinity.
Lesson number four: The mind is that part of the body which makes physical energy intelligible and gives it its worth.
A healthy mind in a healthy body generates good, sound, clean and noble thoughts. Once a healthy body-mind relationship is established, we can be reasonably sure that greater happiness and success is within our reach.
Lesson number five: One of the noblest and purest ways of expressing our gratitude for good health is to serve humankind with whatever resources we have. And what better way to begin than by serving the sick?
Community service for the ailing and the old is one of the finest ways of expressing our gratitude. However, to show care, compassion and love to others, we need not go far.
We can begin by serving our own grandparents,parents, relatives, fri-ends and neighbours and eventually extend this to helping out in the community and also in hospitals.
This kind of experience in community service could well be an important component of school and college. Being by the side of the old and the lonely, helping them eat their food, wear their clothes, comb their hair, and read their books can help make the difference between despair and hope.
Through community service the child will learn of the significance of sharing and caring early in life, when the body is bubbling with energy and the mind is full of ideas, to value and treasure what she has.
These lessons need to be looked at not just as an article or a chapter of a book. They have to be regularly revised and practised in our daily lives.
Good health should be used to perform the right karma — in thought, word and deed.
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