The House that we Live In
If you are a Middle Class individual residing in the same house for over an year, you will relate to this.
I can’t say when it all started but I can look back at least a month and know that something is wrong with my home. It is like there is a bad energy shadowing our home and impacting everything in it. I hear cats crying early in the morning and I see bird poop littering my beautiful veranda. I see spiders crawling my walls and ants running across my kitchen counter. If the creepy crawlers are not enough, our toilets and taps are leaking, and there is a flood in the kitchen as the kitchen drain pipe has just melted away. Who could have caused something like this except an evil energy residing in our house? To top that, our reliable car which has never given us any problem for the last 10 years, has broken down costing us a significant amount of money in repairs. Many lights in our house are malfunctioning and my gas stove has developed a mind of its own, switching on and off on its own whim! I swear I can see shadows moving in the house in the dark. My milk boils over almost every time. My food tastes bland. Overall, I am mentally and physically exhausted dealing with so much negative energy. I think I should move out of this house and free my family from this energy.
I think you get my picture.
Now here is the flip side to the same picture.
Each morning, we keep adequate food for both birds and cats in our garden outside. I love the sounds of cats calling out in the morning asking for food. Bird poop in the veranda are signs that birds love our house for eating and excreting both! There are spiders and ants in our house cause our house is due for my Diwali cleaning (which is still 1.5 months away, so chill!) The toilet leak, kitchen leak and kitchen drain are all thanks to poor quality of fittings in our rented accommodation. We have learnt our lesson not to cut corners when we construct our own house. Ah! Our poor old car was also overdue for parts change. What can we expect, when it has served us flawlessly for 10 years. God bless that piece! Lights are not working due to quality of fittings again and the gas stove, I guess has had enough of milk spill overs! My food tastes bland because I am awful cook and there are shadows in the house cause we put on lights and fans at night. Overall, my heart is super proud of my house. It has the kind of positive energy which cures ailments of anyone who comes to stay with us. It is abundantly full with love, food and all things that make life happy and comfortable.
I will leave it to you to guess which side is my true picture.
Either ways, as I was placing the nth service request for my house on Urban Clap, I couldn’t help but wonder how natural it is for us to maintain our house. We understand that each fitting or appliance or even a car has its service life. If we use it well, this life can be extended but at some time each item will need maintenance or replacement. This is life and we accept it as such. Very much like the house we live in, our first residence is our body. This residence also comes with a set of parts which are bound to wear and tear over time. If we take care of our body well, we will have lesser maintenance issues as we age. If we don’t then we have to prepare ourselves for either a faster replacement of the body (by taking a new birth) or being hopelessly stuck in the same body with its regular maintenance demands.
The only difference between our physical house and our own Body is how humans react to the maintenance aspect. Service calls on the house are part of life, but paying a visit to the doctor is a sign of approaching dooms day. We are happy to replace and old refrigerator but skeptical of getting a simple surgery to fix a damaged bone. We are comfortable with upgrading our car, but uncomfortable about sitting in a wheel chair at an airport. We understand pest infestation in our home but paranoid about viral or bacterial infections in our body. I believe, we have accepted the immortality of our house and everything in it but we have not accepted the immortality of our our body and everything that makes it.
Just as a leaking roof does not indicate a broken and dead house, a lung infection, in no way indicates the end of life. Just as we call a Mason on the first signs of a leak, we should consult a professional doctor if we have a prolonged cold. Most parts of our body are serviceable or replaceable and we need to get them the required help at the right time. Most importantly, end of life does not happen with the end of the body. In fact, the circle of life continues long after the body is dead. Rather, the body dies when the life within us has died.
I pray that as we age it is not the health of the body that defines our life experience. Rather, it is our life experience that defines the health of our body. Life happy, life long, life lived.
P.S. Repair and Maintenance is not a replacement for Prevention. There are prevention methods to elongate the life of the house as well as our body. Having said that, let us remember that we live in a Mortal Body which resides in a depreciating house which is a part of a dying planet which is part of a collapsing Solar System which is one of the billion planetary systems in our Galaxy which are constantly converging into its black hole. To think we can achieve physical immortality of our body is what I call, “Human Sense” or simply “Non Sense”.