I have been noticing something, and once you see it you cannot unsee it. Everyone is running. Reach this, achieve that, be here by this age, hit that number by that year, or else the whole thing was somehow a waste. A race with no finish line. Just the next thing, and then the next thing after that.
I am not against planning. Plan, think it through, of course. But there is a difference between planning and this. This endless sprint from one milestone to another, this low hum of worry that never switches off until the moment finally arrives, and even then it only resets to the next worry. No wonder so many people are exhausted. Anxious. Quietly depressed. We are all reaching for a life that is always one step ahead of us, and we are never once here for the one we already have.
What made me actually stop was something simple. Everything around us is impermanent. Look at nature. The seasons turn, the weather breaks, the leaves arrive and fall. Your problems are impermanent. Your moods, your possessions, your circumstances, this body, this life. None of it stays. The only thing that is truly fixed, the one appointment none of us will miss, is death. After birth, that is the single certainty. And everything in between, every single thing, is not really in our control.
So here is the question I cannot shake. Why do we burn down what we already have, right now, for something that was never ours to control in the first place?
You probably already know what Krishna tells Arjuna in the Gita. Do the action, let go of the fruit. And most of us nod along. Yeah, yeah, we know this one, tell us something we can actually use. But here is the part we skip over. Arjuna wanted something practical too. He heard the very same line and he did not understand it either. So he asked the obvious thing, the thing any of us would ask. How is a man supposed to work without wanting the fruit? Isn't the desire for the result the whole reason anyone does anything at all?
And Krishna's answer is the part that stayed with me. He does not hand Arjuna a clever trick. He says you will act anyway, because action is the only thing you truly have. You will eat or you will not eat. You will sleep or you will not sleep. You will move through this day, because moving is the one thing that is in your hands. Your responsibility begins and ends right there, at the action. What to do, what not to do. Past that line, the outcome was never yours to hold.
Sit with that for a second, because I think it is simply true. We believe we control the outcome because of the way we acted. And yes, we live in a world of cause and effect, so the cause plays its part. But the outcome never rode on the cause alone. A hundred other factors decide how things land, especially the big things, the things we want the most. The job, the home, the person, the dream. So if you really look, what do we hold in any given moment? Just this. The choice to do a thing, or to not do it. That is the entire territory. That is all that has ever been ours.
And if you do choose to act, then act for the sake of the action itself, not for what you are quietly hoping it will hand back to you later.
Let me ask you something, right now. Whatever is going on in your life, whatever it is, what is stopping it from going to its absolute worst? And by the very same logic, what is stopping it from going to its absolute best? Can you point to the one thing? You cannot. Because there isn't one. It was never the clean equation we pretend it is, do this and receive that. Life simply does not give us that much control, no matter how tightly we grip it.
We can plan, of course, because we were given an intellect. But that intellect has a second job, one we almost completely ignore. Its work is not only to arrange life and chase things down. It is also there to raise your awareness, to wake something up in you. We use the tool for the small task and leave the real one untouched.
And look around you. Doesn't the whole world seem designed to keep you running? To keep you average, a little restless, always chasing one more beautiful dream just out of reach? If you only had this, it whispers, life would finally be good, because then you could do that, become this. Always later. Always somewhere up ahead. Never here.
Now, there is nothing wrong with wanting a better life. Strive, build, grow. The lie is in believing that is the only goal, the entire point of being alive. That if you ever lose the motivation, lose the sense of purpose, wander off the path and feel lost for a while, you have somehow failed. No. That is not how this works. Develop yourself, upgrade, become more, by all means. But do not lay your whole life down at the feet of some future arrival.
Because there is no there waiting for you. The something you keep running toward is not up ahead at all. It is here. Right now. We only need the eyes to see it.
Nikunj · June 13, MMXXVI