Sunday, July 03, 2011

Zinda ho tum?

Have you heard this one?
Dilon mein tum apni betaabiyan leke chal rahe ho, toh zinda ho tum
Nazar mein khwaabon ki bijliyan leke chal rahe ho, toh zinda ho tum
Hawa ke jhokon ke jaise aazad rehna seekho
Tum ek dariya ke jaise lehron mein behna seekho
Har ek lamhe se tum milo khole apni baahein
Har ek pal ek naya samaa dekhe yeh nigaahein
Jo apni aankhon mein hayraniyan leke chal rahe ho, toh zinda ho tum
Dilon mein tum apni betaabiyan leke chal rahe ho, toh zinda ho tum
I'm going to be doing the blogging equivalent of thinking aloud in this post, so bear with me a bit, yeah?

I've been listening to the songs of Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara on loop for the past few weeks, and something's been bothering me while I listen to them. At least three of the songs talk about "learning to live again". I'm trying to understand why people need to learn to do this.

We're all living, aren't we? We work, we come home, we meet friends, we spend time with family, we spend some time doing things we enjoy. Isn't that living?

Sure, I haven't seen the movie, so maybe there's something that I'm missing. Yes, there are workaholics, people stuck in jobs they hate, people who have no one, and so on - but all of that is also living, isn't it?

I spent three years in a job that I loved. I was a workaholic. I hated a lot of things about it, but I enjoyed the work, and I admired my bosses, and that was enough. And when I was at work, it didn't matter what stresses there were at home - those would recede to the back of my mind for that period. And when I would come home - which, granted, would often be a lot later than it should have been - I was home. I was with my family, or with my friend, or with you guys, on twitter.

That's living for me. I've never had much of a social life, and that's okay for me. I'm not much of a people or a party person. So I've never had the desire to go out and "live", whatever that means.

But there are all these movies, and songs, and posters on tumblr, that keep telling me I should remember to live my life. So I want to know, what does that mean exactly?

I started this post a week back. Since then, I've read this delightful post by @localteaparty, and this morning, read this in my GReader shared items, which in turn reminded me of this one that I'd come across nearly a year ago. All of which are trying to explain the same thing to me I think, but I still want to know: what does go live your life mean exactly?Link
Tell me?

3 comments:

Henna Achhpal said...

There's a living mechanically and there's one that's actually living.
The daily rigmarole, continuing with the monotony of life is according to me, living mechanically.
But doing something different, experiencing something new every once in a while is what I consider actually living.
To put it simply, if in your daily life you don't feel like a robot simply doing things for the sake of it, then you are living your life :)

Antara said...

I suppose if you can wake up every morning with a smile on your face and have something to always look forward to - whether work or family - you are living your life.

a traveller said...

@Henna: Nice :)

@Antara: I love that! :)