Don’t live a borrowed life. Live your own life

Shunya Palanpuri rightly said, “Life doesn’t happen the way we desire.” and don’t live a borrowed life. Live your own life

We are so caught up—knowingly or unknowingly—in our own karma, sudden and unexpected events, and the emotional climate created by family and friends, that we can never truly customize life according to our wishes.

Osho beautifully said:

“Don’t live a borrowed life. Live your own life. Drop the mask. Be original. Only then will you experience true freedom.”

But in contrast, while living this default life, we get entangled in whirlpools—where emotional conductors at home, in the family, or among friends won’t let us die in peace, and the storms and struggles of life won’t let us live on our own terms.

Today, people are not truly together; they are merely connected.

Face-to-face meetings have become rare. If you feel like meeting someone, the first question they ask is, “What’s the agenda?”
If you dare to say, “Let’s have tea together,” the reply might be:
“Why go through the trouble of traveling just for tea? I’ll UPI you the money for it, haha…”—and they’ll top it off with a laughing emoji.

If a video call happens or somebody run into you, unexpectedly, we immediately wear our social ‘face.’
Once that ‘face’ is on, we forget our real self.

‘faces’ come in multipacks

One for the office, one for home, one for family members, another for relatives, another for Friends and yet another for WhatsApp groups.

Our daily routine has become mechanical:

We wake up robotically in the morning, begin our day with a “Good Morning” on WhatsApp, and end it by locking Netflix with a virtual key before we sleep.
Emotions have been reduced to emojis and GIFs.

Emotions are never updated, infect disabled.

Our “Life App” today comes pre-installed with notifications, calendars, virtual meetings, online deliveries—but no folder has been created for emotions!

Even weekend family time is a pre-approved calendar event.
During the rest of the week, we stay busy calculating:

• Who’s following whom?
• How many followers do they have?
• Why are they following you?
• And what should you do to get more followers?

We all say that karma bears fruit and destiny rules all.
But the truth is—without effort, even destiny doesn’t support us.

“Life doesn’t happen the way we want it to.”

It is necessary that we challenge this destiny, because we’ve gotten used to living life by default.

The truth is, life is given to everyone—but why doesn’t it happen the way everyone wants?

We never choose the explore option in our life settings.
We never update our abilities.
We merely copy someone or the other—
Copying the actions of whoever we follow—without living our own version of life.

We don’t live the life that’s meant for us, that came bundled with our life package.
Instead, we try to live the life that’s trending.

So, let’s say it loud: Better late than never.

We still have time.

Let’s format our Life App.
The basic package is already pre-installed.
Let’s update it.
Let’s customize it according to our needs.

As Lord Krishna rightly said in the Bhagavad Gita:

“स्वधर्मे निधनं श्रेयः परधर्मो भयावहः।” “Swadharme nidhanam shreyah, paradharmo bhayavahah.”
“It is better to die in one’s own duty than to follow another’s path, which is fraught with fear and danger.”