I have always experienced an intrinsic conviction to perceive life in the form of a journey…
If we view life as a fundamental concept you will notice it has a distinct beginning and an end, not dissimilar to a journey one embarks on.
I would have to conclude from my days of living, that the intent of life is to be aware and conscious of the journey.
I never had a taste for the banal propaganda of the lost souls who advocated for being absent or apathetic about life because it is not worth considering or tasting with full alertness.
Being ignorant of our surrounds is a sure way to simply exist but never live!
I also want to explore the disparate advice that is often bandied about the way to live and understand life.. If you were to line up the popular views in society you would find them diametrically opposed.
I’m going to offer an alternate view and support my findings through experience and logic.
Consider the two quotes below, firstly from Ernest Hemingway and a Bollywood Actress Sonali Bendre. Each offers an alternate perspective of how one can live or understand life…
“In order to write about life first you must live it.”
Ernest Hemingway
“Life goes on, and one should look ahead and not backward.”
Sonali Bendre
A huge portion of society either will tell you, you haven’t lived life yet to understand it and the other says don’t reflect on the past just look ahead..
The answer as it often does, lies in between…
Reflection
I have found that life and its lessons are here in the know… to be had and beheld and understood.
Self reflection everyday, in the midst of day what I have found to not remaining either a prisoner to the past nor blasé and apathetic and absent in your present and future.
Coming back to my notion of life as a journey.. imagine you’re sitting in the window of a train… if you forget to look out the window and absorb the landscapes, people, food, culture and stories.. you will have successfully commuted from your birth as it were to your grave.
What I learn about myself yesterday was I don’t want to look away from the vistas outside my train window.. I want to keep experiencing life and learning from it, in the present.
I am not the person to cruise through this life oblivious to the journey, only to arrive suddenly at the destination that awaits us all…
Be like the woman in the photo.. reflect on your actions, your words and learn from them… don’t dismiss them as a mere occurrence to be pushed aside.
The moments of your life have value…
A refusal to learn from them costs life nothing… but could cost you.
“Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift of God, which is why we call it the present.”
Bill Keane
Xquist Life 
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