Life and Death In One Breath

 Assalamu Alaikum

    To whoever is reading this blog, I have two questions, why were we born? and when will we die?
I can bet none of us know the answer. But at the age of 16 I felt like I knew the answer to the first question. Why was I born? What is the purpose of my existence? What is my contribution to the universe? Are some questions which bothered me from a very young age. Until the day when I decide to be a doctor. Now as we know being a doctor is a noble and well respected profession but that wasn't on my priority list, instead saving lives was my main inspiration. To save lives we need to understand the basic concept of life and death. 

And this is where we enter a rabbit hole.

    To understand life we have to understand Death first. What is Death? Many people will say that the absence of life is death or what comes after life is death but what if i say that he concept of death we all know is wrong. Death and life coexist in each breath that a being takes. Every inhale is life and every exhale is death. we are alive when we are awake and dead when we are asleep. The line between life and death is thinner than a strand of hair. A lot of us have lucid dreams. For those who don't understand what a lucid dream is, these are dreams which are operated by our thinking, these are dreams which look more real than reality itself. When we lucid dream we are actually half asleep, half awake. Or should I say neither awake nor asleep, neither alive nor dead. The yogis call this state as "Mrityuanjaya"
which means the deathless. So form this explanation we understand that death isn't something foreign, instead it is something which stays inside us. This whole explanation was inspired by the book Life and Death In One Breath written by Sadguru. 

    So with the understanding of life and death i started to prepare to be the doctor, the first step of which was MBBS entrance exam. I sat for the exam with full enthusiasm but when the results arrived. I was not shortlisted. My whole family said let go of it and do something else but I won't listen. I thought lets try again. Took a whole year prepared again but the same consequences. At this point I had hit my rock bottom as the maximum number of attempts for MBBS entrance in Bangladesh is two time, so i did not have the option of another attempt. But what do I do now? Wasn't this what I was born for? How did things turn out like this? A million more questions in my mind. It took me a whole month to think straight. I finally accepted my defeat. But was I really defeated?

    Finally I stepped towards a new career even against my heart. It took me some more time to understand that maybe being a doctor was never my fate, maybe I would be a better programmer than I would have been if I was a doctor.

    Just the way Life and Death exist together maybe failure and success also exist together. Failure is just another step to success and I learned that the tough way. And even today i don't have the answer to what my purpose is in this universe. But my new motive is to be a better human and serve humanity.