Challenge 5: Something Important

Write about something that is important to you. (Hope College)

Everybody wants to be successful in life. And to every different person, success can mean different things: wealth, power, popularity, graduation from Harvard, a house in the Caribbean, or a diploma in music. To me, success means only one thing: happiness. Yes, happiness is the key to living life and the ultimate goal that I am striving for. Once I am happy, then all that I have been striving for gets meaning. I realized what happiness means to me one day, in the winter of 2010-2011.

The holidays started with a blast, and I was looking forward to every bit of it. Yes, my parents wanted me to be fruitful of my time after the first week, soI did push myself into some intellectual activity every day. But most of all, I really enjoyed getting in touch with my extended family and finding out what my cousins had been up to.

Then one day, tragedy struck. Though our family had known that it was bound to happen in the coming weeks, we were still shocked. My great grandmother, Krishnamaya Adhikari, had passed away. She was ninety-nine years old, healthy, lively, and as caring as always. I had visited her a few days before her death. Though she always needed to be reminded of who I am, the smile that spread across her face was gentle, calm, and thoughtful. Her eyes would twinkle with delight every time she saw her great grandchildren, though she could not remember their names or faces. Because of her inability to remember, I felt sympathy towards her and could not imagine how difficult life must be for her.

When my family of five heard the news about her death, we immediately went to see her away from my uncle’s house, where she had breathed her last breath. As I got a look at her corpse, I was ashamed. I was ashamed, not because I had not been there to see her leave, but because of the pity I had felt for her. Her face, as she lay there, stripped of life, still held a sense calmness and satisfaction. She looked like she had left the world with happiness filling every inch of her fragile and worn-out body. She went in peace, knowing that she had left behind a great, united family, who would always care and look out for each other. Her death brought home long-lost friends, the whole family, and together, we celebrated her life. Her way of living showed us what happiness could be like.

Lastly, my father, being himself, created a Facebook page dedicated to my great grandmother. He posted many pictures of her and underneath, wrote a very famous Sanskrit saying: “When you were born, you cried while the world rejoiced. Live your life in such a way that when you die, the world cries while you rejoice.”