Nature gave every living thing the same code. Survive. Eat. Procreate. Protect your young. The sparrow follows it. The ape follows it. So do we.
None of it was chosen. But nature left three gifts at our doorstep and walked away — no instructions, no manual.
Awareness has to wake first. Then something has to be chosen. Then the choosing has to become action — or it was never a choice, only a feeling. When a life stalls, it stalls at one of these three links.
Which of the three gifts have I used this year — and which have I left at the door?
The first two tides are not a failure to be corrected. Their job is survival — in the physical world and the social one. That is not a flaw; that is the design.
Providing for our children is a continuation of the self, not a transcendence of it. The care is real — it is still care for one’s own. The third tide begins beyond the bloodline.
Life, as the world teaches it, is a game of snakes and ladders. The game began in India as Moksha Patam — ladders for virtues, snakes for vices. We kept the board and lost the lesson.
Built for one. Higher always means above somebody, and the score is always kept. The snakes sit right beside the rungs.
No score, no prizes, no name carved into it. Nobody remembers who built it — and millions cross.
| First Tide | Second Tide | Third Tide | |
|---|---|---|---|
| The doctor | Practises medicine for a living | Becomes the name on the wing | Trains healers; care for those who cannot pay |
| The gardener | The garden at home | The park with the family name on the gate | The nursery that trains park-keepers |
The first line is the awakening. The second is the company. Most of us are not suffering — the life is good. That is exactly the sleep Farid meant.
A self busy barking at its own image cannot see anyone on the other side of the glass. The mirror becomes a window only when the reflection stops demanding to be seen.
If the people closest to me decide what grows in me — what is growing?
The keera does not read your résumé or check your age. It simply bites. It is the restless voice at two in the morning that says: life has to be more than what I have.
Nature wrote a code for the body. It wrote no code for the soul — so nobody else’s instructions will ever quite fit.
Something bothers you — something broken to fix.
Exposure, education, opportunity.
The company we keep — sohbat.
Purpose in motion, carried into contribution.
“Being human always points, and is directed, to something or someone other than oneself.”
When did the keera last bite — and what did I do with the next morning?
The only thing completely yours — and the only one with an expiry date.
What you were given, and what you sharpened. Deployed, or quietly idling.
The easiest to give, and the easiest to hide behind.
The air, the water, the roads, the teachers, the tide somebody else raised so your boat could float — all of it went in before you had a name. So the question is not when will I retire, but: what goes back?
What the planet advanced you and never invoiced.
Doors opened by people whose names you never learned.
What you could still do, and have not.
None of it can be paid back. All of it can be paid forward.
Write the headline now — not “loving” or “hardworking”, but what you actually leave behind. Revisit it every six months. Significance is not what you do after you retire; it is a way of living.
Who thrives today because of me — where nothing flows back to me?
Still — because it has not been spent, whatever your age. Available — because it is within reach today, in this life.
Your arena of mastery. What is it in service of?
Your fuel beyond profit.
Not a plaque on a wall — a direction you are walking.
The gatekeeper. Without it, profession becomes ego and purpose becomes notoriety.
One kind of happiness is rented from outcomes — it leaves when the result fails. The other lives inside the act itself, and nothing can repossess it.
Most textbooks still print Maslow’s pyramid with self-actualisation at the peak. In his later work, Maslow placed self-transcendence above it.
Steel cattle guards are expensive, so ranchers simply paint stripes across the road. The herd stops at the paint — for the rest of their lives. Until one animal crosses. Then everyone follows.
| AWARENESS REFUSED | |||
| 01 | Looking Away | “Once I know, I may have to act.” | Look anyway. |
| 02 | Comfortably Numb | Nothing forces the question. | Write the exit plan now. |
| 03 | Fragmented Attention | Too many small fires. | Choose your exposure. |
| CHOICE HANDED AWAY | |||
| 04 | Borrowed Thinking | “Who am I to challenge it?” | Ask: what do I think? |
| 05 | Waiting for Permission | Will they ever allow it? | Seek company that meets your courage. |
| 06 | Social Obligations | Inherited scripts as duty. | A polite no is agency. |
| ACTION NEVER TAKEN | |||
| 07 | Herd Mentality | “Nobody else seems bothered.” | Be the first to cross the paint. |
| 08 | Fear of Falling | Too much built to risk it. | It was on loan. |
| 09 | The Ocean Is Too Big | Why start at all? | Just fill your cup. |
| 10 | Too Old to Begin | “I’m too old now.” | Old is when growth stops. |