Why is life always up the Slope? by K Eswaran

  When we were in school, we felt that once the board exams are over, life is going to be great in college.  No more worries about studies or the botheration by the parents and we would get a lot of freedom and friends. But when you join the college, you have some added responsibilities. There is no spoon feeding anymore. You got to pull up your own self. Life becomes hard. Sometimes you feel, ‘oh school was so cool’, and so on.

 Later, when you join the Academy, NDA /IMA/ OTA, you jump term to term with the hope that things will improve. Yes, the old issue ceases, but new ones crop up. You think that once Academy days are over and you get commissioned, it would be all rosy and a cakewalk. You can have a BALL. You are wrong again!!

You land up in a unit where you are the junior most. You have got to do all the running around. It would appear that the whole unit is running only because of you. You suddenly react ‘oh my God, the Academy days were so much better, we did not have to worry about anything at all’.

Anyway, you carry on and hope that life would be great when you get married.  It would be all love and romance, all year around. You finally fall in love and get married or get married and fall in love (which is more often than not).  Life appears to be a breeze, so cool, for a year or so. Then the challenges of a married life catch on. You have the freedom, but you are not free. You have to put your ‘vehicle of life’ in higher gear sometimes.  You have much more responsibilities. Yes, you are happier, but life is still up the slope. Now you have two people to look after.

 Life carries on and then you have children. Just when you thought there is no time between your office work and family life, your son or daughter create more work for you.  You are enjoying every bit of your children, their smile, their talk, their walk, their love, but now your vehicle of life is in much higher gear, really 4 by 4. Every day is a struggle, a challenge. But you remind yourself, ‘when the going gets tough, the tough gets going’, and you keep on going. More so because there is no other  way out! There is only one way to go and that is to go forward. There are no retakes in real life!

Then suddenly you remember that there is one person who can certainly help you and you can bank upon him. You remember God. Yes, God.  You tend to become religious, a devotee, because you realise that in this mayhem of office, family, wife, children, friends, relatives, if things are going on smoothly, it has to be some divine intervention.

 You console yourself that, when the children grow up, things would be better and you would be able to relax and really enjoy life.  But sorry to say dear friend, you are wrong yet again.

 One day, children go to college. The house is empty. You have become a senior person in the Army.  Ironically this is the time when the Army also gives bigger houses, so you feel more empty.  You get into the ‘empty nest syndrome’.  You are all the time worried about your children, ‘whether they are fine in the college or Academy’, ‘hope there is not much ragging’, ‘whether they had their food’, ‘hope they have not got injured’, ‘Are they happy?’  etc.  You now feel that it was better that your children were at home.  At least you could do something about it. Now it becomes tougher for you, as you worry about various issues, but you can't do anything about it. 

 In the Army, as you are a senior person now, you have certain perks and privileges. But you are also facing all the brunt of the seniors and higher headquarters. The juniors below you are all having a ball. (It is a different matter that when you were a junior and struggling to keep pace, you felt that your boss was having a ball.)

 Now that you are the boss, well settled, children have got their own things to do, you are back as newly wedded couple, only husband and wife, but much older.     So Nice.  Appears romantic, but it may not be so.  You really don't know what to do with the new found freedom -- big house, empty space, lot of time. It becomes difficult to pass time. It is yet another kind of struggle. Please try to understand. Your wife at is at home, she may get into some kind of depression and she does not miss a chance to express it. So you have to absorb that also. 

 Then one day your retirement  arrives.  Now you feel, aha, finally the day has come when you are really going to start relaxing and have a ball, play golf, no worries at all. You shall have all the time.  

Really!! Are you sure?? Let us see.

Finally, you retire. All are happy. Everyone says goodbye, sings praises about you. ‘you did this, you did that, Army would not be the same without you, we will all miss you,, blah blah blah’.

Yes, you feel very nice and start wondering, ‘why am I leaving then?  Why don’t I continue?’. But unfortunately your PPO has been released, so you cannot go back now.  It would be better to pack up. 

You retire, you come home to a dream house. Try to settle down for a happy life ever after.  The ‘ever after’ lasts only for a couple of days.  The husband and wife are seeing each other, 24 by 7.  They really get fed up, so they start finding faults in each other. Earlier they used to see the glass half full and now they start seeing the other half. You can imagine what happens next. Another kind of struggle.

Now you are worried about keeping yourself busy. Being suddenly out of work you have withdrawal symptoms. You need to keep yourself busy and you look for some job. Then there are some issues in the neighbourhood. People are not very friendly.  There are colony issues. Your children are to be married. What about that? New set of worries.

 Once your children are married you start worrying about the grandchildren. Hope they are  safe at school; hope they eat well….  And so on and on….

 Oh my God! ...   Enough is enough.....  Let us put a full stop here !!….

   

But the point to note is that life is always up the slope.  Your vehicle will always be in 4 by 4 gear. All wheel Drive!!

 Now you may ask, ‘when can I put my vehicle in neutral gear and take it easy? Really Cool’.

 Yes, I have an answer for that too. But you can do that only once!

 when you are heading for ‘swarg vatika’. ‘Ram Naam Satya Hai’. Last day of life.

 Till then my friend, life is in gears.  Up the slope.  You better enjoy it!

The slope and gear is part of life, like your breathing. It will remain till the end. The sooner you accept it and learn to live with it, better it is for you.