Keeping One’s Mind on Tomorrow
In 1898 Lord Curzon was appointed the Viceroy of India. He had two daughters. When Lady Curzon was expecting their third child, both she and her husband were hoping that it would be a boy. Their hopes were dashed, however, when in March 1904, another baby girl was born to them. The couple were staying in Naldara at the time of the birth, and they named their daughter Alexandra Naldara Curzon after the place. Later on, Lady Curzon returned to London. In one of the letters that Lord Curzon wrote to her from the summer capital, Shimla, he consoled her with these words: “After all, what does sex matter after we both of us are gone.”
It is possible that these words were merely an attempt on Lord Curzon’s part to hide his frustration. Be that as it may, adopting such an attitude can solve most of life’s problems, if one becomes conscious of the value of doing so.
Man desires money, offspring and power more than anything in this world, and he does his utmost to acquire them. But if a person reflects upon this, finally he is going to leave all these things behind. What is the good of having something which he is bound to lose? If people were only to realize this, they would become content with what they have. It would put a stop to the oppression and cruelty that is perpetrated in this world out of sheer greed.
There is little difference between finding and losing in this world, for no value can be attached to finding something once it is accepted that he is only going to lose it again. How much effort man puts into acquiring wealth in this world; yet the inevitable result of his efforts is that he leaves everything behind. Every life eventually ends in death. When death comes, it tears man away from the things he is most attached to on earth.
People who live for the present, with no thought for the future, think that they can build happy lives for themselves at the expense of others. They seek to ruin others by bringing lawsuits against them in human courts, but it is they themselves who are heading for ruin; it is they themselves who will be tried and condemned in the divine court of the hereafter. They imagine that they can revel in their own glory, having wrought havoc in the lives of others. But they ignore the well-being of others at their peril. For soon their material props will vanish into thin air–who in this world is not bound for the grave?—and they will be exposed for the helpless creatures that they really are.
