Lessons Life Has Taught Me

Of life’s truths and turning points that make us who we are

- Anjuly Mathai

There are certain times in life when you read a book or watch a movie or listen to the lyrics of a song and something clicks in your head. You instinctively know that this is a truth that fits your experience. When you get this illumination through literature, Salman Rushdie describes it thus: “When we read a book we like, or even love, we find ourselves in agreement with its portrait of human life. Yes, we say, this is how we are, this is what we do to one another, this is true.”

It is not very often that this happens, when your mind lights up like a Christmas tree. But when it does, your whole self feels lighter, as though your soul has touched the throbbing heart of the universe. Of course, soon enough, life comes rushing in with its humdrum concerns, disappointments and disillusionments. But you never forget the sensations you experienced in that moment. In some ways, your whole life can be whittled down to a yearning to stumble upon these truths. The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy writer Douglas Adams called it the search for ‘Life, the Universe and Everything.’ French mathematician Blaise Pascal called it a desire to satiate an ‘Infinite Abyss’ of the heart. [For him, this abyss could only be satisfied through a knowledge of God.] The ancients condensed these life learnings into pithy idioms, which have become tried and tired cliches.