“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving”
~Albert Einstein
Most people envision their life after retirement as a vacation they can never take at present. So, they, hopefully, save up for retirement and then go on a long vacation.
Can a vacation last a lifetime? What happens after the vacation?
Albert Einstein said that life is like a bicycle and that you need to keep moving to maintain its balance.
Similarly, according to the Heart Sutra, which states: “Gate Gate Pāragate Pārasaṃgate Bodhi Svāhā” which translates as “Gone, Gone, Everyone Gone to The Other Shore, Awakening, Svaha.” It basically tells us to keep moving. However, moving toward what? We must move toward our awakening because vacation, at some point, ends without meaning. However, awakening lasts an eternity and never makes us feel like we need to retire.
We have to recognize that constant movement and progress are key to maintaining balance and achieving our goals.
Charlie: “It’s the same. Yeah, but things are good man. Things are great. It’s going great, seriously.”
Max: “C’mon, let’s get real. Let Max soak up your pain.”
Charlie (takes a pause and then talks): “My life sucks. I drive the same car. I have the same job. I talk to the same people. I’m chasing the same girl… except now I pay all her credit card bills. She still doesn’t care about me. I mean, I talked to these people tonight, they’re going parasailing, motorcycle racing, cliff diving. I’m just in a rut, a bad one. I have so many responsibilities.
Max: “Like putting Ted’s twins through college?”
Charlie: “Exactly, that is on my list. I mean, what the hell happened to my life? Wish I could start from scratch. Just get it right this time.”
Charlie is a character played in a movie called The Do-Over. He is an introvert who never changed his personality or his circumstances regardless of how everyone around him changed. He led a life of regret and self-suppression, bogged down by the responsibilities that others leveraged upon him. For instance, he finally married the woman he liked in high school. From the looks of it, his dream came true but he knew deep down inside that she married him only so he could pay her bills and get her ex-husband’s twin sons through college.
How many of us in life are driven by the responsibilities we allow upon ourselves? Responsibilities could be a two-edged sword but how many times do we use it as an excuse because we fear the other end of freedom?
Becca: “So that’s when he came up with this idea to bring him back to life. But he couldn’t do it alone, he needed somebody else. He saw where you were in life. He also saw that you… probably needed it more than he did.”
Becca was Max’s wife who revealed to Charlie that both Max and he needed to start life all over again. No matter the age and the accomplishments, the journey was never really over until he reached a point where there was no stopping after retirement.
How many of us need to be pointed in the right direction? Where once we’ve achieved milestones in life, someone needs to tell us that the journey has just begun.
Uttishthata Jagrata Prapya Varan Nibodhata
(Arise, Awake, and Stop not till the goal is reached)
~Swami Vivekananda
Swami Vivekananda said that one needs to keep moving until their goal is reached. In hindsight what he meant was not the goals that we achieve in life and then feel it’s all over. There’s still a lot more to life than one limits unto their career path.
It is about the awakening that one needs to accomplish after crossing the finish line of one’s milestones. So, there is never really a ‘hanging up your boots’ situation once your life goals are achieved.
There was a gentleman I met in the U.S. who said to me that he had achieved everything in life. Now, it was time for him to stop and retire. I shared with him about how life was always about movement and never really stopping. We shared insights about life and how the end of a career path is never really the end of life, and that one’s journey is always in motion. To this day, he has a part of Swami Vivekananda’s saying on a wall at his workplace – “Gate, Gate” – which means keep on moving, keep on moving.
Furthermore, just to clarify, I am not talking about continuing with the hard strife and struggles of life. I do not advocate that one must continue to hustle all their lives. What I am trying to convey is the aftermath of your life’s achievements and how your journey doesn’t end there. Your journey, as a matter of fact, is still ongoing, which is why you need to keep on moving, keep on moving until you awaken.
It is as Robert Frost once so eloquently wrote in his poem:
“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
