Lives well lived

Recently, David Brooks, a columnist for the New York Times started a wonderful exercise in his blog. He asked his readers that “If you are over 70, I’d like to ask for a gift. I’d like you to write a brief report on your life so far, an evaluation of what you did well, of what you did not so well and what you learned along the way. You can write this as a brief essay or divide your life into categories — career, family, faith, community, and self-knowledge — and give yourself a grade in each area. “ He received a number of replies that he dutifully published on his blog.

I would like to do the same for my readers in India. This desire has been particularly driven by my recent reunion of classmates from fifty years ago where I was wonderstruck with the various turns my friends had taken in their lives. I was determined to capture at least some of their experiences and so I volunteered to produce a brochure for the reunion “ The Class of 1961” and I am now working on a book on the “Pioneers of Offshore Technology in India” on the early days of these developments. But essays from my readers in their own words about the varied lives they have led in the past 70 years would be a particular gift that I would like us to share with our young.

It is true that in our normal lives we have few formal moments of self-appraisal. Occasionally, on a big birthday or after a funeral, people will take a step back and try to form a complete picture of lives, but we have no regular rite of passage prompting them to do so. Old people will reminiscence but the young are oft too impatient of their elders to listen closely to their hard earned lessons from a life well lived. My hope is that these essays will be useful to the young for our young people are educated in many ways, but are given relatively little help in understanding how a life develops, how careers and families evolve, what are the common mistakes and the common blessings of modern adulthood.

Many of these essays will doubtless be inspiring, others may contain life’s lessons of paths to avoid. Some may be from people who passively let their lives happen to them. Others may wish they had had more intellectual curiosity, or that they weren’t so lazy, or that they had not gotten married so young. Looking back, many may be amazed by the role that chance played in their lives. Others may identify a pivotal moment that changed their lives. The most exciting essays may be written by the energetic, restless people, who took their lives off in new directions midcourse. Others may have waited to retire before plunging into passions that had simmered underneath for most of their lives. We will perhaps find that most of us were immensely grateful to live in the era that we did. An amazing number may cherished their marriages of decades or more. And, for almost all, family and friends will have mattered the most.

And, most importantly, these brief essays will I hope offer lessons for the rest of us.

So shed your inhibitions and start writing. I promise  to publish them in the future in my blogs. Send them to me at my address : anilmal@gmail.com.