19. Understand What You Have Lost!

How often do you put off doing chores? You think that you will have a lot of time on your hands later to finish whatever you put off. However, not only will you not have time, you will not remember what you were supposed to be doing or looking for. If you waste time like this, that much of your life has been wasted.

We ignore every minute as it presents itself and instead, we search for something else.

A small story:

An old man went with his family and grandchildren to the cinema. During the movie climax, the old man began to crawl on the floor in search of something.

The grandson asked, 'Grandpa, what are you doing? This entire row is disturbed by your antics.'

The old man replied, 'I lost my toffee and I am searching for it.'

Again the grandson said, 'Be silent! I will get you new toffee.'

For a minute, Grandpa calmly sat in his assigned seat. But he soon began to crawl on the floor again on his hands and knees.

Again the grandson asked, 'What are you doing? Sit silently. We can get new toffee.'

'I can't!' replied Grandpa. 'I want that same toffee.'

The grandson could not understand what was so special about that toffee. He asked why.

The grandpa wailed, 'Because my dentures are stuck to it!'

This funny story has some truth in it. Most of the time, we do not understand what we have lost. Therefore, we have no idea what we are searching for. We only feel something is missing, but we have no idea what is missing or how it went missing.

In life, we search for material things for happiness. We search for toffees. The truth is, the toffee does not give us the real happiness. Beyond the toffee, there is something that gives us real happiness. We need to find that.

This is true in every facet of our life. We do not understand how to live now and here and we are swinging between the past and present. In fact, in this way, we reach nowhere.

We always think there are three time zones: past, present, and future. This is a totally wrong concept. There is no past. There is no future. There is only one time zone, which is the Present. Either you live in the present or you do not live at all.

Living in the present leads you to eternal bliss, nithyananda.