Take Your Time – Own Your Day!
“He only is rich, who owns the day!” Thomas Ralph Edison.
What a beautiful sentence this is! It clearly tells us that, it is not the person who has got great wealth, health, or fleeting pleasures of the world, who is rich. It is the person who has control over his actions and senses, who stays calm, who is ready to take ownership of the day, is rich. If we take into consideration, we have lived numerous days in our life and are all set to live many more. It definitely seems that we have done all we could to make our life comfortable for us, as well as others, according to the best of our ability. The underlying motive, it seems, behind this is security. We all want to make sure that our job or business is secure, we have enough wealth so that the financial insecurity can be ruled out forever. We also aspire for security in our relationships, trying as best as we could to make sure our beloved ones’ never part from us.
Though we try to take ownership of our whole life, we miss the little moments, the nuances, the little situations, each moment unfurls for us. Every moment comes and gradually it disappears, so do the days, and the sunrise, and then the sunset. If we think more deeply, we will realize that working super hard trying to achieve wealth and gain securities, does not relate much with taking ownership of our actions and our whole life in general. It seems to be more like we have found a few methods which help us to gain things which will make our life comfortable and at the same time luxurious. It might be the same with interpersonal relationships. We want the security of the love of another person and we are investing time and emotions over it.
Where comes the ownership in this? Using the word “OWN” can be termed as LIVING the day, LIVING each and every moment with awareness. Every action which we perform has to be performed with complete awareness and full concentration. People often forget whether they put off the lights after they lock the doors. They again go back to check, if they have locked the cars. At times, they forget what the question was when they begin to answer a question. Is this true awareness? What kind of ownership is this? Who will like to be a companion of an absent-minded person? Perhaps, another absent-minded person! The moments are fleeting, they won’t wait for you to attract your attention. They are like little twinkling stars in the sky, they will come and go. If you don’t hold your attention towards any one star, you will forget which star you witnessed a few minutes ago and whether it is there or has disappeared.
Not many, but there are indeed some lucky few, who indeed take ownership of the day. Irrespective of the amount of money they have in their bank accounts, they are infinitely more rich, happy, and lucky than all who are ignorant of the beautiful day. The day starts as the sun begins to rise and it is ready to depart, without any regret or pride, after the sunsets. The game which is played during that time decides upon the winner. The winner is the one who lives the moments rather than the minutes or hours. Time and space are just indicators or reference points for him and nothing more than that. The person who takes the maximum ownership of these moments is the real winner and is worthy to participate in the game for the next sunrise.
The rest of the people, though they are not aware, are but losers. They have targets and milestones for their life and are happy to chase them. They will continue to work hard in the offices or in their businesses, without pausing and reflecting upon their little actions. It is definitely very essential for people to make money to take care of the financial aspect. If they do not work, they will not be able to provide food for their family, education for their children, and get minimum things that are required to live a normal life. But it is the method and processes, which spoil the game for all. We get up with the idea of reaching the office on time. So our actions at the start of the day are designed to achieve that milestone. Once the person reaches his office, his next milestone is to prepare a presentation which he needs to show the management after the lunch break. He becomes totally focused and also anxious for the same. His next milestone is to complete the activities of the office for the latter half of the day.
By the end of the day, the person feels that she has completed one important thing of the day, which is professional work. She feels either satisfied or dissatisfied with the work but gets totally drained up. Many things linger upon the mind of the person as she comes back home and a drained person, depleted with energies, arrives in front of her family. And now there is the final session, last battle, ultimate milestone which is to complete the remaining work and head towards the bed.
This is the lifestyle that is common to almost all people. Students, or retired people or housewives, though their lifestyle varies, the mental baggage which they carry is more or less the same. How would you term or define such life? It is as if we are living by sessions, instead of moments. Every day may be divided, according to the way people live these days, into 3 sessions. The start of the day till lunch, from lunch to the evening and then the final session which lasts from evening till we go to bed. Compare that with the person who lives moments instead of sessions. He has got innumerable moments in a day. Comparing a moment with a minute or a second would definitely be incorrect and also an insult to its beauty and glory.
Every time you are aware of what you are doing, you are living by the moments. The Buddhists term it beautifully as MINDFULNESS. It means being aware of the present moment. Who do you think are the most powerful people in the world? The rich, the affluent, the charismatic, or the famous people! Where lies the underlying power? The power is indeed stored in the NOW. Things will take care of themselves if you are willing and ready to live by the moments. It will definitely not affect your wealth or relationships if you live mindfully. They will only multiply. A person who is aware, a person who respects every moment, is peaceful, graceful and a loving person. People these days search for such magnetic people, though they do not possess even a fraction of these qualities. It is like a drunkard, who drinks five bottles a day, but does not want his son to become a drunkard. It is like a woman who lives immorally but expects her daughter to live a moral life.
Maybe we should dwell a little bit more into this and discuss methods to own the day. Meditation is a beautiful and the most powerful tool for this. Spending a few moments every day, starting from 10 minutes and stretching till around 30 minutes, will open floodgates for you to own the day. Meditation can be done in different ways, like closing your eyes sitting in a proper posture, chanting a holy mantra, or visualizing some deity or your Guru. Reading a few pages of some holy scripture is a fantastic way to start the day. Reading a holy book will bring your mind to the holy plane. And after reading the book, if you meditate you will surely benefit many times more. For beginners, and people who get frightened with the idea of meditation, playing some soft soothing music and listening closely to it, keeping the eyes closed, and sitting in a comfortable erect posture, is a nice and effective way to begin meditation at an early stage.
After meditation, comes the next step which is karma. Karma in English means action. But any action is karma, so we need to make sure that our karma is unselfish and conducted with a pure and holy mind. Our mind is already fine-tuned in the morning because we have already read golden words from the Gita or the Bible and have already done our meditation. “Work for work’s sake!” says Lord Krishna in the Gita. Whether you are doing work in the office or doing work for your family. Any action performed should be in the spirit of benefiting mankind in general.
A doctor does karma by treating the patient and curing his disease. But what is his underlying motive behind it? Does he do it only to make money or his underlying motive is to serve his brother? Does he feel happy when a person comes to his clinic? Or does he sympathize with the patient and feel sorry for the state of his brethren?
One more method to develop a state which will help us own the day is music or mantra. Music is something that even lures a little 2-year-old kid to start moving his limbs. It has got a magnetic effect. Even the lord loves music in the form of prayer. Mantra chanting is also a form of music that will give great power to us at the same time make us feel relaxed and happy.
So we have discussed three methods, meditation, pure unselfish work and power of prayer to assist us in OWNING THE DAY.
