Some Covid-time resolutions: Part I

Death rarely announces its visit, and has no respect for time, place or person. Let’s live life momentously, fearlessly, and joyfully, with our head held high and with full faith in that supreme power who rules over all, even death.
Let’s refuse to live on a thin diet of misery. Expand your chest, be ready to take care of not only your close ones and yourself but at least one other human being or animal. To live only for the body and only in the body is a demonic cult. Even just one selfless act a day, by each one, can change our society, change our world! It is important that as soon as the thought of a noble, selfless, charitable act comes into your mind, execute it right away. Never postpone to a further time any good act. With the passage of time, any thought loses its strength and vitality.
All good deeds are not just about money or time. You cannot hide under the cover of the grand old excuse “I barely make my ends meet” or “I have just no time”.
Even a few words of love and hope to suffering people at such times will translate as immediate peace into your own soul. Think.
Let’s introspect, and we don’t need to go to Thailand to do that! Let’s ask ourselves whether we have become better or bitter by this Lockdown, this virtual House arrest. Even a small resolution, that, “I shall not hurt anyone today (keep the goal small) by even thought or speech,” is enough of Tapas, (austerity).
Just try! All Scriptures give out injunctions to control speech, the tongue being the most powerful sense organ as it rules over speech as well as taste.
Prarthna Saran, President Chinmaya Mission Delhi, can be reached at prarthnasaran@gmail.com