The symbol of life

While surfing through the Internet, I came across Ankh – the symbol of life. This symbol was first conceptualized by Egyptian culture. Further exploration of the topic made me realize that symbol Ankh depicts the origination of life – It is a symbol for the initiation of life.

The interesting topic made me wonder – “What could be the symbol of our whole life?”

Many symbols came to mind but none of them seemed to fit the subject perfectly. Then suddenly a symbol popped in my mind which I had seen in a book of Fritjof Capra –   The Turning Point.

The symbol is -

 This symbol represents our life and its various stages perfectly. The horizontal axis in the symbol represents time .The vertical axis could represent various aspects of our life - our energy trend, our activity trend, our flexibility trend, our inquisitiveness trend and so many other things.....

In the beginning there is nothing, then life originates. With the passage of time we begin to accumulate and build knowledge, wisdom, strength, independence, and a personality. We do new and different things. Initially this happens at a slow pace, then we get an acceleration a s denoted by the symbol.

Then with the passage of more time we begin to reach the top part – the plateau. We begin to slow down. Our spirit, mind and body no longer yearn for adventure but for stability. We start getting into a routine. We tend to become less flexible and inquisitive.

Then slowly it starts to decrease – the downward trend begins .We no longer have the energy of the past, our minds cannot accept concepts which we do not already know. Finally the day comes when it is all over.

The symbol might seem to be showing a disappointing pattern of leading life. But it is actually the natural pattern - we cannot avoid this pattern. Part of this pattern may be forced by us on ourselves due to the hindrances of our mind but part of it also forced on us by our body.

What perhaps we can try is to skew the pattern as much as we can and extract the most out of our life.

 This skewed pattern shows us that we continue to live
with a young body, mind and soul until a very late stage .
This can be achieved if we keep ourselves
physically and mentally fit.

                                        
                                              This skewed pattern also prevents the fall
                                              by keeping a healthy body mind and soul,

Perhaps the best possible way to achieve something like the above two patters could to follow a lifestyle depicted by this graph –
trying new things , different things, periodic vacations ,periodic activities which break the routine etc etc from time to time.

PS --  If you have any other symbol which you think would stand for life , do share the same.