If saving lives means something more than delaying death then we all have the opportunity to save l

Transcript

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If saving lives means more than delaying death, then we all have the opportunity to save lives. During a life-threatening pandemic, the medical care providers are the frontline warriors. By their courageous and competent actions, they can save people’s lives.
When the rest of us are forced into inactivity, we may feel that we aren’t doing anything worthwhile. However, we all have the opportunity to do something worthwhile, and specifically something worthwhile centered on saving lives. Actually, when we say we are saving lives, essentially we are doing nothing more than delaying death.
Everyone is destined to die, if not by the pandemic’s effect, then by some other cause at some later time. So, when medical intervention saves someone’s life, it actually does nothing more than delay their death. This is not to minimize the importance of the work of the medical caregivers, but to highlight the sobering reality of our inescapable mortality.
Of course, if life is prolonged, that is valuable to the extent that saved or prolonged life is used to do something worthwhile. If death is the inevitable end for all of us, then what is worthwhile? Gita Wisdom explains that human life is an opportunity to attain eternal life because we have our consciousness developed enough to sense our spirituality and then by practicing spiritual processes for further developing our consciousness, we all can realize our eternality, our spirituality. If by the end of our lives, we have developed more love for the spiritual than for the material, then each one of us can attain eternal life at the end of our lives.
The Bhagavad Gita 8.7 therefore urges us to constantly cultivate spiritual growth by remembering the ultimate spiritual reality, Krishna. Such remembrance is the fastest way to grow spiritually and if someone misses the opportunity to attain eternal life, then that is a wasted human life. If someone taps the opportunity to grow spiritually, then their life is saved.
Human life is meant for something more than just seeking medical intervention or providing medical intervention to delay death. It is meant to transcend death and that opportunity to develop our spirituality and ultimately transcend death is the way to truly save life and that is an opportunity that is there for every one of us. If we cultivate spiritual growth, we can save our own life and if we share the resources for spiritual growth with others and inspire them to grow spiritually, then we can help them to save their lives.
Thus rather than feeling helpless because of the enforced inactivity during a pandemic, we all can reinvigorate ourselves to do the spiritual activity that stimulates our growth and thus truly save our lives and the lives of others.