THE  FINE  ART  OF  LIVING

Prof  B M Hegde,
Vice Chancellor
MAHE University,
Manipal - 576119

Living is an art, a fine art at that. “ Art is that which makes the man’s day,” said Henry Edward Thoreau. I quite agree with him. While we teach all sorts of unwanted facts to our children at school, making life miserable for them at the examinations to recall all those facts, we never make an attempt to train them in the art of living which is what they have to do for the rest of their lives. It reminds me of the old saying that we teach our students British history and Indian history but never their family history, the latter might be more useful even if taught at home. Consequently, most children learn the art of living by living life experimenting and imitating others, mostly their parents at home and teachers and peers in school. Many of us elders are anything but good examples.

Man’s ingress into this world has always been naked and bare; his egress from this world neither is under his control.  He does not even know when, how and where he exits. The period in between is what he has control over. If that bit could be made happier he would have lived well. “Our progress in this world is trouble and care,” wrote D.H.Lawrence. Trouble is an integral part of living, but care is what makes it worth living. How do we go about our daily routine caring for others? This act of caring for others is the art of living, nay the fine art of living.  Getting more and more does not leave one happy, as man always wants  more; but giving makes one always happy. The art of giving is the art of living.

Let us look at some of the best examples of this hypothesis. Bill Gates, the richest American, gave away a whopping sum of one billion dollars, the biggest individual charity in history, not for nothing. He must have earned the goodwill of the world and thereby happiness for himself! Nelson Rockefeller Sr. was a very successful Texan billionaire, at the young age of fifty-two. He pulverized every other man in the oil business and earned lot of enemies. His effigies were burnt every day. He could not go out without bodyguards. With all that he was not happy. He fell into a strange distemper. He lost twenty pounds in weight, had lost his appetite completely, and was not getting a wink of sleep at night. He looked ill and old at his middle age. One of those sleepless nights in bed gave him the solution to his problem as all the doctors and technology in America, at that point in time, could not help him. Early the following morning he went to see his lawyer to establish the Rockefeller Foundation. He completely recovered and went on to live into his eighties healthy and happy. John Nobel earned a fortune selling dynamite, which he had invented. He was the richest European of his time. Following a mysterious fire in his factory, although John survived with the skin of his teeth, he changed completely giving away the last Swiss Frank of a total of 800 million to create the Nobel Prize Trust; John lived happily ever after!

Jamshedjee Tata, JRD Tata, GD Birla and many other Indian businessmen did the same to get happiness. Most business houses have their charity. The more you give the more you get by way of happiness.  Durgadas Mandelia has established a Trust for helping the less fortunate, the Janatha Janardhan Trust. All these and many more have come out of the joy of living for others that these infracaninophiles realized during their lifetimes.

The other thing that makes life miserable is the “I” concept, the super ego. Let us examine this concept scientifically. Every single cell in the human body, of which there are about one hundred thousand billion in all, likes the other cell so much that it is difficult to keep cells away from one another. Even when cells die due to any disease other cells in the vicinity slip to take their place. This cell slipping is a very important aspect of remodelling of organs after illness. In fact, our body cells love the cells in other human and animal bodies so much that all living things would have fused into a large sheet of cells if Nature had not invented the mechanism of immunity. We would have been one large sheet of body cells in this Universe, called the syncitium. If that were the philosophy of the human cell how could we as human beings hate one another or think that we are superior to another person?

Many of us suffer from the unhappiness of the feeling that we are very powerful and all others should be subservient to us. This also is unscientific. Inside every cell in our body there are the battery chargers that run us and make us do every bit of what we do. We walk, talk, laugh, or lift even the little finger because of those batteries. Those batteries-the basal bodies, centrioles and the mitochondria-are all not human organ parts. They belong genetically to an outside germ!  During the millions of years of evolution they swam into our original procaryocyte long before it became the eucaryocyte. Man is rented, hired or fired as they wish.  Where then is the power that people think they possess? It is all a big myth!

Many of us suffer indignities, imaginary losses and lose our cool because of our imaginary empires. Even the mother earth that we inhabit looks smaller than a speck of dust when viewed through Hubbell’s telescope with reference to the macrocosm. What of our empires then? All this should make us humbler by the day. Humility is the essence of true education that is lacking in the present system of education. The competitive ethos that we imbibe from our educational system makes us proud and arrogant to think that we are very powerful and could move mountains. The fact still remains that humility gives one peace of mind and happiness.

Quantum physics has made conventional wisdom in sciences look like child’s play. It has turned all our concepts about solid states and matter look upside down. Nothing in this Universe is solid. Every atom in its core consists of waves of hydrons rotating at phenomenal speeds and held by the enormous force of attraction to the nucleus. That is why we get atomic energy when we bombard an atom. The apparent solidity of the human body or the tabletop is an illusion. Just as a fan, when run very fast, looks like a sheet of metal instead of different leaves, the illusion of solidity comes from the speed of motion of the hydrons around an atomic nucleus. Every aspect of this Universe described is eventually in the eye of the beholder!

When one goes still further, the last bits of every atom are the lepto-quarks. They are so subtle that they can not be perceived easily. They are identical in all of us and they could even exchange from one to another. The ancient Indian concept of Satsanga comes from this concept. Good company gets you good lepto-quarks and vice versa. Even the adage birds of the same feather flock together must have come from years of observational research in society.

Man has very little scientific basis to think that he is all-powerful. United, men are very powerful; divided they fall very soon. It is in everyone of our own interest to be helping one another. Happiness is in giving and sorrow is in store while getting. One could see the dire need to be charitable in life. All of us can not be Bill Gates to be giving money. The greatest charity in life is not giving money, food or blood. One could do a lot of good to society if one could be charitable to spare the other man one’s judgement. Judging others and passing our judgement could be the most painful experience for the recipient. All of us could practice that charity. That is in fact giving our love to one and all. The real art of living is loving one another!

One other aspect of unhappiness in life is our emotional reaction to life situations. When we get angry and react to our anger it is some chemical in our body that is making us do what we do. Anger, depression, jealousy, pride, contempt for others, our false sense of superiority and every other human emotion is the handiwork of some chemical or the other inside our system. This is akin to the drunken man talking and behaving abnormally under the influence of alcohol. Just as alcohol temporarily converts man into a monkey, these chemicals, catacholamines and related compounds, make a monkey of emotionally upset man. Once this realization dawns on us we feel ashamed to react to our emotions. When we do not react to our emotions abnormally we have no reason to be unhappy.

What then are the secrets of the fine art of living? Universal love, compassion, sparing another of our judgement, not abnormally reacting to human emotions and filling our minds with good thoughts for good deeds for others are in essence the ingredients of this potion for happiness.

One has also to remember that if we did all this and kept quiet our mouths will not be fed from heaven. Man is made to work. Work is worship. Work never kills. Laziness might kill. Work one must, very hard at that but, with total detachment for self-aggrandizement. Results, good or bad, under those circumstances do not bother us. If one loves ones work one does not feel tired. Make your work your play and enjoy working.  Most of us do a job for salary, which is tiresome. Very few us know the art of working, which is done for love of working. Rewards would come automatically. Making a fast buck quickly needs devious means to achieve success, but decent living and enjoying life is possible with sincere authentic work.

Life is a challenge. One must meet the challenge with courage of conviction. The fine art of living is living for others!

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And - which is more-you’ll be a Man, my son!

                Rudyard Kipling 1865-1936.

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