Everything is fine until the sky falls in

YOU think you know. Then you lower your guard and act as if everything is fine.

With the passage of time, you stop paying as much attention to the things you should. You are confident. What more can you do? Life is smiling on you and so is luck. You love and are loved.

You can afford your dreams, everything’s fine and you feel blessed, and then, without warning, the sky falls on your head.

And once you’re flat on your back, usually on a hospital bed, you realise that your life, your whole life, with its ups and downs, pains and pleasures and promises and failures, hangs by a thread as flimsy and imperceptible as a spider’s web.

That’s how 56-year-old billionaire Steve Jobs must have felt when he heard the news of his terminal illness.

His last words are nothing but the truth that seared his mind like acid: “After all, wealth is just a life experience I have had the opportunity of knowing. At this moment as I lay sick in bed, reminiscing about my life, I realise that all the recognition and wealth I achieved are insignificant and lack higher meaning in the face of impending death. So take my advice and be courteous and considerate towards others. As we get older, we realise that a $30 watch and a $300 watch show the same time. The same goes for a car – irrespective of how much it costs, it takes you to the same destination.”

In the complexities of humanity, I am amazed at the integrity and resilience that many show when accommodating their self-concept to the reality of imminent death.

You have had so many victories in life until you met something that you can’t beat.

Walking a tightrope over waiting chasms is a terrible thought and task that I would never bestow on my worst enemy.

Life’s cruelty of mortality becomes a race with death to the finish line. In a world full of all different people, wealth hangs awkwardly on some.

There are certain things that money and wealth protect one from. And there are certain things that it does not.

When the rich arrive at the airport, they don't stand in the queue waiting for a taxi.

Instead a chauffeur waits for them and loads their baggage.

But when the weather is bad, it’s bad for everyone!

If the ambulance carrying you and rushing you to the hospital is stuck in traffic, there is nothing one can do.

These things are called levellers – the things that remind you and me that we are all heading for the same place.

Upper society needs to be aware that all the luxurious proprty and homes they hold on so dearly to, they are renting from God. Otherwise, when you are about to die, you will realise you have not lived at all.

We have two lives, and the second begins when you realise you only have one.

In her book The Optimism Bias, Tali Sharot asks the following: “Would you rather see yourself winning the Tour de France or surviving cancer?”

Most people would rather see themselves winning the world cycling title than dealing with cancer. But she chronicles how Lance Armstrong, the only person on Earth who has experienced both, said he would rather choose beating cancer than winning the Tour de France.

Whether you have accomplished everything in your life or not, keep on imagining.

It is a gift designed to influence your tomorrow.

I hope I don’t sound portentous or bitter, but ordinary people need to love and respect more.

All you have means nothing in the world if you don’t know how to give some away. Ask Imtiaz Sooliman of Gift of the Givers and he will give you a lesson. Go out and taste a hidden dimension, cross over the white picket fence.

Walk barefoot and eat ice cream more often. Without passion, connection and synchronicity, there is only existence, not life.

Otherwise, when you are about to die, you will realise that you have not lived at all. We have two lives and the second one begins when you realise you only have one….