Explore life
Explore life
True exploration begins when we step beyond the boundaries of certainty and experience life firsthand, rather than merely imagining or defining it. This reflection reminds us that life is not meant to be summarised by ideology, but continuously discovered through openness, courage, and lived experience
What does exploration mean? To explore means to go into areas where you have not been. Exploration is not an idea. If you sit at home and explore the African continent, that is called imagination. If you go to the African continent and walk through the continent, that is called exploration. It is a world of difference.
If life is so small that you can sum it up in your head, it is just not worth living here for this many years and going through some nonsense that you can sum up in your head in ten minutes. You can only explore and explore life. You can never sum it up. If you sum it up, that means you missed the whole point. Exploration is what is needed, not ideology. Ideology means you have made your summary of life. We should not make a summary of life.
Looking for security in life is one of the biggest deterrents to exploration. Rather than being fluid and moving, you want to crystallize and concretize whatever little you have. When life gets stagnant, it is terrible. What will happen to you is: you will never cry really bitterly nor will you laugh fully. Neither your tears will be spent nor will your laughter be spent. You will get into a state of limbo. If you live fully alive, that is great. When you live and then fall dead, it is okay. But in a state of limbo, you are neither alive nor dead; when you have to die, you will know you are dying without ever having lived. That is a tragedy. You will see, over 90% of the people in the world die like this.
If you watch people dying, they have lived for 70 or 80 years, and when the moment of death comes, the last moment, you will see bewilderment on their face. They are bewildered because they are dying without ever having lived. Without knowing an iota of life, they are going. If you die joyfully and blissfully, it is fantastic. Or at least if you die peacefully, it is okay. But if you died in bewilderment, it means you are dying without ever having lived. That is the most horrible thing. I do not wish anyone dies in bewilderment.
(Sadhguru is a Yogi, mystic, and Padma Vibhushan awardee, also known for his New York Times bestselling books. He founded Conscious Planet–Save Soil, the world’s largest people’s movement, impacting over 4 billion people)
