My good acquaintance Karan Singh Sidhu, who is a great juggler of words posted this thought provoking question - the one that forms the title of this essay. Therefore, this essay is dedicated to him.
Since the query was posted on the facebook wall of Mr. Sidhu, it was interesting to read various very earnest views expressed. Overwhelming majority either responded in affirmation or counter queried, "how do I know whether one is living a limited edition or not?"
Most who responded felt being questioned how positively superlative is the adjective preceding the word life for them. They interpreted it as - "Are you living an exciting or satisfied or healthy or intense or spiritual life etc.?"
Here is my interpretation of the question:
I thought it important to first understand whether is life a limited edition or not and once this is clear, it will be much easier to answer. Limits are of two kinds outer and inner. Yes there are outer limits to life. But are there inner limits to it? No. There is Zeno's paradox stating that to walk 1 metre one has to cover half and to walk half one has to cover one fourth and so on.... One therefore has to step on the next half, but there is no next half as there are innumerable halves between any half and me. Since the next half does not exist, hence, one cannot move (this predates quantum physics). Similarly, with time there are innumerable moments between any two moments. Adjectives to life are generated by two components one is the power of biases (how much one can fool himself in believing what one wants rather than what it is) and the intactness of memory (power to remember biases). While power of biases keeps us from being mentally bruised; memory consists of events that are stored for future use. The more are such memorable events for a unit time the smaller the units of life. Indeed, human progress itself is nothing but the reduction of units of life. Early man counted life from hunt to next hunt, or harvest to harvest, it all accelerated in last century to being one - from letter to letter and is today from message to message. Presently, events are counted in seconds (say reading Mr. sidhu's query meriting this essay on fb wall). So the more are the events per unit time, the higher the number of memories, the less is the edition of such life limited. The biases (which are scientifically proven to be congenial) then choose which amongst the ever increasing choice of events are to be remembered and how. These biased memories also are increasing with every passing day. Therefore, life is an edition limited only by how many events can one make happen per unit time. They who live intensively are less constrained in life's edition. Life is like a book one writes; whose thickness is pre-determined but thinness of pages is not.
About happy life - there's little to write. Its known that 70% contribution to one's being happy is congenial. I have even known people who are happy being unhappy, congenially.
Mr. Karan Sidhu, I have lived a life with sections that have innumerable, very thin pages and sections that have few thick ones - both occuring at non-statistical intervals.
Authored by:
Deepak Loomba
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