My Chapters in this Journey

The journey of Life. The chapters in the book of Life.

Today I was kind of thinking little bit more on the topic "How can I add value ?" Or importantly how can I be useful and make best of my time in this physical world. Make some meaningful contributions.

There will be days where you will or might question your existence. I definitely have. I still have my chat messenger status message as "Trying to live rather than exist."

Living and Existing are entirely different. Atleast from my perspective. Living with passion, doing what you love doing. Having the freedom to do what you want, when you want, where you want and possibly with whom you want. That's a life of freedom, purpose and meaning. A life filled with happiness. 

On the other hand if you are barely getting through the day, mindlessly passing day after day, existing paycheck to paycheck, not knowing what you are doing and why you are doing what you are doing or even stopping or taking the time to become conscious or look deep inside of you to know what ticks you ?, what inspires you to change your perspective ?, what motivates you to do things differently ? If none of this is happening I wonder "what's the point ?" and how are we any different from a clock that's broken or a robot that just exists but is not useful or does nothing.

Do we want to be the ant who wanders aimlessly and dies or the butterfly or the honey bee flying around with colors and enjoying the nectar while helping the flowers blossom and the plants grow.

There is a saying in Indian culture/mythology  which translates to "It is better to live like a swan for 6 months rather than die like a crow after living for long time" 

Meaning : even if you live for short period - live purposefully and be useful 

(the context behind this is swan is considered a miraculous creature which can separate water from milk, was very useful and one of the thing you will see a lot used by Indian Goddesses/Gods to represent them on the other hand there is crow which is considered useless and all it does is eat scrapes, sit, fly around aimlessly, sleep and do that again and again. Nothing useful)

When I questioned myself "how am I adding value ?" or "how can I be useful ?"

Some of the things that came to me for now are 

• Inspire others to adventure (travel/run) - on the journey to run a marathon in all the 7 continents and 50 states of the U.S 
• Share my experiences of adventure (Write/Speak) - plan to write a book and thinking of atleast self publishing an Amazon kindle version of the book. Hopefully this writing habit will help me finish the book.
• Make people laugh (Write/Speak) - trying stand up comedy 
• Make people think (Write/Speak) - a toastmasters member. Recently awarded ACB - currently working on my next speeches and eventually see myself giving a TED talk.
• Create, Build and Grow things (products/companies) - currently working on few of my ideas and in the process of releasing the app and making it big 
• learn to communicate /market yourself/products (Inspire others by what you have to say or offer - this is a tough one for me as I always don't like to self promote or brag and I want people to notice what I am doing and let my work and things I do the talking but sometimes I think it is good to shout out to the world instead of hibernating in our little world.

Anyways today I am glad I wrote this as this is one more reminder for me to "Live Life" and be useful and add value.

"Ask NOT what the country has done for you but what can you do for the country" - JFK

Peace