In school we were taught about living and non-living things. The ability to grow, is one characteristics that separates the living things from nonliving objects. In school, the growth in living things meant growth in physical dimension. For human beings, it is like growing from an infant to a baby to a child and so on to become an adult. So, once you become a fully grown adult (are there any?), does growth stop? How does life move then? Is growth only limited to physical growth that we can see with our eyes? What about growth in mental faculty and growth in spirituality and awareness? Does the growth ever stop or do we always keep growing? Where do all these lead to? How is life moving?
You may say, if someone is happy, it means that life is moving for him in positive direction; and if someone is sad, it means it is going in negative direction for him. But this may not always be true. Consider the 3 cases below:
- A person can be quite happy while doing all wrong things in life. Then is he justified? Is his life moving in a positive direction?
- Someone may be doing all the right things, but is always unhappy and keeps cribbing about life. So, can we say he is moving in a wrong direction?
- How about someone who is so contented with his life that he does not do anything and does not even provide for his family. What direction is his life moving?
Now, if you have to judge each of the above three scenarios, you judge them against your own value system, while the person in discussion, has acted as per his own values. So, I may say someone is going downhill while the same person may not agree to it.
"How is life moving" - This is a very difficult, subjective and philosophical question to answer. Even if I try to answer it for myself, it will be tainted by my worldview which in turn is decided by my value system.
Imagine yourself with the ability to shut down your thoughts. All thoughts come to a stop. The mind is blank. Mind is standstill. And it remains in such condition till someone gives some stimuli to activate it. Assume you developed this condition over the last month. Would you say that your life moved in a positive direction? Or negative? This depends on where you started from and what you wanted in the first place. If you wished to develop such ability and you could do that, it is in a positive direction your life has moved. Now, something you never wanted to happen and it happens, then you say life moved in a retrograde direction. Thus one may argue that life moves positively, negatively or does not move at all depending on our thoughts!
So, how is life moving? – This is a useless question to ask and it is even more futile to attempt to answer this question. No matter what, life moves on. So does time. It is my endeavor to keep my life moving as per my principles and core values. If I can do that, each and every day, day after day, I can say, at least my life has been growing in the right direction.