Echoes of a Life Well Lived

Shlok Vaidya

"Echoes of a Life Well Lived” Copyright © 2012 by Shlok Vaidya. All rights reserved. Smashwords edition.

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Echoes.

Your life is an arc. You rise, you crest, you fall.

This very short book sifts through historical precedent and fictional construct in search of hints as to how to steepen the slopes. Greater success and controlled decline.

I have found shoulders that offer both firm footing and welcoming shadows in which to walk. They are listed here, in order of importance, and of life. An arc of a a life well lived.

Remember, these notes, these stories, these echoes, are but a guide. You should select your own models. Emulate those you consider great, and let the natural process of reconciling your experience with their mythology navigate the rest.

Family. Michael Corleone.

Possess unbridled ambition.

Life is about success. Not only yours, but everyone you care about, because no one else will. Be ambitious and ruthless in this goal. You will probably make morally ambiguous choices. You will probably have regrets.

Be that person to the world, because you have to. But unlike Corleone, maintain a firewall. Be another, worthy person to those you care about. Humble, kind, modest, giving, patient. Good. You will have those within the group who can’t separate the external persona from the internal. That is their failure, and theirs alone.

Corleone wasn’t able to navigate this line. Why? Because it is honest. It takes more willpower and brainpower than being a sociopath. You want a family, and you want to be successful. You aren’t repressing either impulse. Rather, you are bringing them together.

The rewards are real and much more meaningful: strong relationships; a tribe; and plenty of smiles along the way. A lasting contribution to a better future.

Think. Karl Marx.

Consider entire systems.

Examine the flows of as many systems as you can. Think about how they evolved. Dream of massive dialectic shifts. Project when these will occur. Think about preparations you can make to participate, dampen, or accelerate.

That could be writing a book. Or pivoting an existing organization. Or starting a company, or funding a new project. Or working for someone who is. Or setting yourself on fire in front of the right people.

But always think huge, because it increases the chances of mattering. Most of humanity has been anonymous, lost to dust and history. Do not fall into their ranks.

If you do this right, engaging in arguments about particulars (politics, economics, art) will become tiresome, boring, wasteful. If you can think through how to solve the underlying problem, bickering is impossible.

A word to the wise: Marx matters not because he wrote, but because his friend Engels took his unfinished tome and finally shipped the thing. Produce. And, unlike Marx, be able to care for your family.

Passion. Devdas.

Surrender to love.

The fictional Devdas is the protagonist of one of the finest novellas ever written. He is the son of a prominent family who grew up alongside a lower class girl. The two eventually fell in love.

But the world and wealth demanded he could not, should not, be with her. He lost sight of meaning and succumbed to the pressure. She marries someone else. His fall ensues. Alcoholism and death on her doorstep.

The lesson? Experience all-encompassing, life-forfeiting, sacrificing-everything love. The kind that makes living worth it. 

Doesn’t matter for whom. For her, him, the kids, your parents, the company, the cause, the book, or the dog. Just experience the kind that, when afire, makes the world easier to bear.

The kind that, if lost, the only logical conclusion is to drink yourself to death. (Just don’t fuck up to the point where that is true.)

Design. Steve Jobs.

Make everything not suck.

Fountains of suck are found everywhere. They gush pain and misery. Designers have the force of will, the ambition, to focus on that point until it shrivels and disappears.

Think in terms of solutions. Blur art and science. Disambiguate human behavior. Collapse complexity into simplicity with the goal of making systems just work.

Execute. Tim Cook.

Focus absolutely.

With funding, sheer force of will, and big thinking, Cook has built history’s best logistics system. He woke up at 4 a.m. and gave up the day-to-day of family to do it. His drive has yielded the world’s most successful company.

The later you were born, the more likely it is you will work until you die. Finding pleasure in what you do for most of your life isn’t enough. Do only that which you are passionate enough about to sacrifice.

Dedicate all of your time, skills, cognitive ability, and entire self to this purpose.

Give. Bill Gates.

Do well, then do good.

Make the life you want. Enable those you love. Rise to the highest you ever will. Be aware of this moment. Savor it.

Then, at your peak, utilize all that you have, however much or little it is, to address systematic suck: what battles humanity is waging for health and for happiness.

Attack these points with the same ferocity, the same passion you wielded to succeed, and knowingly deplete your resources to force change.

Retire. King Ashoka.

Forge your mythology.

An ancient Indian king who lived from 304-232 BCE, Ashoka spent the first half of his life embroiled in warfare. A battle for succession amongst his brothers. Conquest that expanded his empire to stretch from Afghanistan to Burma.

As the story goes, he walked the field after a successful, but terrible assault, and in the carnage discovered the brutality of his ways. He immediately discarded the tools of his success. Violence. Torture. And he sought out new tools. Buddhism. Nonviolence.

Ashoka spent the last 30 years of his life with his sons, enhancing quality of life for their citizens. He built irrigation systems, universities, hospitals, and roads -- modern systemic change.

As his rule faded, he inscribed the lessons he had learned on a network of stone pillars topped with lions’ heads. He died, and fifty years later, his kingdom died as well. The story of his awakening remained. His pillars still stand today.

In the declining slope of our lives, perhaps all that should remain is a symbol. A mythology. You lived, you did something, and some think it meaningful.

About Shlok Vaidya.

My background is in countering terrorism and building startups. Now I’m writing speculative fiction. You can read more about me and my work at Shloky.com and follow me on Twitter @shloky.