Will There Be A Tomorrow ?

Once in a while, one stumbles upon something that serves as an eye-opener. Something that forces you to introspect and develop a new perspective on things that we take for granted. Today was such a moment for me. I was logged into Facebook when a news-feed appeared on my wall. I follow the author and motivational speaker, Robin Sharma, and he had shared a video link from TED, with this remark – “Perspective. One of my favorite words. Watch this inspirational video and you’ll get what i mean..”

And that’s exactly what I did. I watched the video recommended by him and it certainly changed my perspective on life, and on the people and things that we take for granted. it forced me to think, and think hard. So moved was I by the experience that I decided to blog about it immediately – because what if there was no tomorrow? A sense of urgency descended upon me, and here I am now, a few minutes later, typing out my thoughts to share with you.

The video that so inspired and motivated me was a short talk by Ric Elias, a survivor of the US Airways flight 1549’s emergency landing that took place on 15 January 2009. In a tremendous demonstration of his flying abilities, the pilot managed to land on the water in one piece – a feat that no pilot would ever wish to emulate.

Ric Elias spoke about the thoughts that flashed through his mind as the plane was going down and how his whole life changed in those few short minutes. I do not have adequate words to describe my feelings as I watched the video and listened to Ric speak and I would actually prefer that you watched the video yourself. I am embedding the video right here for your convenience. And I must warn you, that clicking on the play button could change your perspective too, as it did mine.

We tend to take life for granted, and because we take life for granted, we tend to take things easy. We act as if we have forever to accomplish what we want to accomplish. The question that we need to ask ourselves constantly is – Will there be a tomorrow ? And I’m sure we all know the answer to that one. The only problem is, we don’t answer that question honestly enough.

And what if tomorrow never comes ? Would we leave this world without telling our loved ones how much we loved them ? Would we watch our kids grow up and become the individuals that we want them to become ? Would we ignore the simple joys of life in pursuit of material things that may not matter so much ? Would we actually ever live a happy life ?

Obviously, we are not doing things right. As Ric Elias says, we waste time on things that did not matter with people that matter. Instead of telling them how much we care for them, and how much they mean to us, we allow our egos to get in the way and neglect relationships. AND if tomorrow never comes, these very people who matter so much to us will go through the rest of their lives believing that they did not matter to us. Because we never tell them so. Because we think there’s enough time to do that. We tend to allow negative energy to shape our thoughts and our lives, and I know that from now on, from this very moment on, I have to work on removing this negative energy from my life.

All of us may not be lucky enough to see a miracle like Ric did, but the least we can do is to learn from his miracle. We need to spend more time with our loved ones, and tell them as often as we can, that how much they mean to us, and how much we care for them. Instead of focusing on just our careers and whatever else we consider to be important in life, we also need to focus on our relationships. Ric sums it all up beautifully when he says “I no longer try to be right; I choose to be happy.” And that, to me, is a whole new perspective on life and relationships. The simple joys of life that we normally choose to ignore are waiting to be discovered…