Mortgaging One’s Life

 

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Mortgaging One’s Life

When human beings were hunters and gatherers, they were completely free. If they made a kill on one day, the next 15 days, they ate from it and just lived – maybe beat a drum that was made out of the skin of the animal and danced around a fire, or used their hands to create something else. But food was insecure then – these wild animals are quick. Many times, they did not get a kill and everyone went hungry. So, people developed agriculture. In agriculture, we have to do certain things on a particular day, not two days later. Some compulsions came with that, but it was still okay.

In India, depending upon what food grains we grew – we are not talking about cash crops – we worked hard for 50 to 100 days in a year, and the rest of the time was a series of festivals. Every village had its own festivals to which people from the surrounding villages came. Every wedding was at least five days of celebration. Work for sustenance was only 50 to 100 days in a year. Today, once we have a 30-year mortgage, it is almost 365 days. Whether we like it or not, we have to go to work, and not everyone is geared up for this – they will lose their mind after sometime.

Now, they also have to pay health insurance and grave insurance. When they are alive and healthy, people are paying in instalments for their funeral. Unless we are going to leave in a beautiful way that will be very useful for everyone around us – why are we bothered about how our funeral will be handled when we fall dead? It is understandable and also appreciated if we do not want to be a nuisance to someone else, but what does it matter how they will bury or burn us or feed us to the dogs? This kind of concern is going to take away our aliveness.

Another aspect is that we constantly have to do things mechanically, not out of any passion. The whole society expects us to be a machine. We are not waking up in the morning because we want to make a difference in something today or because what we do is meaningful or because we want to do it – it is all about making a living. Making a living takes very little. It only becomes a problem when we want to live like someone else. If we just want to live, it is very simple – every human being is capable of this.

Making a living only becomes complicated when we want to live like someone else, when we want to have the things that the neighbour has. Today, the whole economic model on the planet is just about that, and this keeps increasing the suicide rates, the numbers of cynical, frustrated people, and the numbers of broken minds. That is because there is no ease in life – we always have to do something. If we do not go to school, if we do not go to work, something bad will happen. And we cannot suddenly change the course of our life and do something else. Everyone is trying to compel us to do the same things all through our life. Affluence is not going to bring freedom to people – it is going to tie them up in knots.

It is better to be free from life’s debts, societal debts, financial debts and start living in the moment – that is the only way we can become mortgage free and truly alive.