Sure enough we live in eternity and there must be no haste, but if we had realised ourselves as eternal beings already, we wouldn’t be thinking so. Such is the paradox.
Am I right in thinking thus at each birthday or is it mere impatience and clamour to rush through life masking itself as wanting to do more for the Divine?
I won’t call it impatience, but an intensifying of the aspiration on the birthday as the soul perhaps senses that more should be done. There is perhaps also the midlife evaluation of life which opens the doors to change, sometimes to an unprecedented leap. Adolescence (twenties), midlife (forties) and the elderly (sixties) are transition periods when a window opens for breaking free from the past and taking a leap towards the future. If we see it symbolically through the change of seasons then the forties are periods of purification, the rainy season followed by the autumn when one turns in a more concentrated inwardness. It was perhaps this understanding that had led to the ideal of four ashramas. I have seen these transitions in my life and presume it is happening in your life as well.
Affectionately,
Alok Da
