(KP-4) Why Does the Thought of Dying Helps us to be Fully Alive

A Sweeper, Mother of Two, Becomes RAS Officer | How can we all learn to remember better | Learning from mistakes and failures

Learning from Soliloquy

Suppose, I get to know, miraculously, how long I am going to live. Let’s say, I have 20 more years to live. Now-:

• Will I change the way I live?

• Will you treat me differently then?

Now let’s say I have 2 more years to live, what now?

Will I change? Will you treat me differently?

If yes, why?

When we all know that life is uncertain, only death is certain. Why do we still keep on living like a copy?

Why do we still keep on living like a machine?

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Positive Feel-Good Story

Asha Kandara, a mother of two kids, who used to clean the streets of Jodhpur as a worker of Jodhpur Municipal Corporation (JMC) got felicitated by the Mayor of JMC upon clearing the Rajasthan Administrative Services Exam (RAS), one of the most prestigious government jobs offered by a state.

How did she get the time and resources to prepare for one of the toughest exams in Rajasthan? Let’s know her in her own words:

I used to get up at 5 am. After duty hours, I studied as much as possible. From using mobile online applications to getting notes from wherever I could, I studied as hard as my circumstances permitted. I felt I would not be able to clear the RAS exam since others were studying all day long. But my children always encouraged me and persuaded me to believe that success was around the corner. We should never underrate ourselves. If we do not realize our own strength, if we don’t respect our own self, we can’t get anything.

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Book/Podcast/Video Suggestion

This week’s book suggestion is Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer.

If you want to understand how we remember, and how we can all learn to remember better, then read this book.

Bits and Pieces from the book:

You can exercise daily and eat healthily and live a long life, while experiencing a short one. If you spend your life sitting in a cubicle and passing papers, one day is bound to blend unmemorably into the next - and disappear. That's why it's so important to change routines regularly, and take vacations to exotic locales, and have as many new experiences as possible that can serve to anchor our memories. Creating new memories stretches out psychological time, and lengthens our perception of our lives.

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Quote/Poem

You don't learn from successes; you don't learn from awards; you don't learn from celebrity; you only learn from wounds and scars and mistakes and failures. And that's the truth.

- Jane Fonda

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