Here One Minute, Gone The Next.

Last night, I heard my neighbor frantically call out my name; her husband lay still on the floor; his children had just left, they were preparing for his grandson’s wedding – he was playing with his 6 month old grand daughter and even promised to take her to school everyday when she grows up. Oh what an agony was it to see them break down as the ambulance returned empty.

Just before all this happened, I was with a friend who is going through a new phase. She & her husband had this enviable life – so full of life – traveling around the world, taking life as it comes. Things now seem to have changed; Forbes top 50 most powerful women in business replaced the lonely planet’s most romantic cities, in her pin up board. What they printed below her name on her business card mattered more to her today than the number of vacations she took with her husband…. Unfortunately, her husband was still stuck where they began their journey together. You see a man has to stand by another man, especially those who love life as laid back as I do 🙂 She didn’t like what I had to say.

Given her desire to grown now, we may soon start hearing name in business journals; perhaps not as an Indra Nooyi yet. Like how Paulo Coehlo puts it, “if you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it”. But their life has started to lose its, once very famous, mojo. Is being career conscious a sin she asked in reply, I said evil eye perhaps!

I called her back later in the night, fearing she would have taken my name off her contact list. Thankfully she answered with a cold hello. I told her about this death. I told her it doesn’t matter to me if I die as a Warren Buffet or as some one who never had career visions. All that matter to me was that moment; reading a bed time story, cuddled in the bed with my daughter. Being with my parents mattered to me. That doesn’t mean being irresponsible with my career either. I wished her a great week at work & hung up.

When my neighbor took his last breath, I am sure he didn’t care about his tiny watch repair shop, I bet he fought it hard to play just a little while longer with his tiny grand daughter!  Garden of Eden was built to be enjoyed; the tree of knowledge is what that makes us worried about things like career growth – no I don’t mean to call our bosses the Satan in the apple tree or encourage irresponsibility. Money is an important & a basic need.

The question I wake up today is this: Is it impossible to undo what Eve did? In a metaphorical sense. Is it possible to live life instead of being bothered about the designations our epitaphs will carry? I close.