Living an extraordinary life is simple!

Yesterday was the last day at work for one of my good friends. He is migrating to Australia.

His feelings were mixed.. Happiness and sadness. Happy to embark on a new journey, a new phase in his life, new culture and sad to leave old friends, organization, formal, informal culture, everything.. We talked for long, took pictures together and savored every moment of being together since it was his last day at work.

It was a very visceral feeling. It brought back to me memories of the graduation day, memories of leaving my parents after marriage, memories of leaving my kids to their colleges, memories of leaving my friends back home when I moved to a new country. Emotions were similar. There is something significant and memorable about these emotions. Even after so many years, the feelings are touchy.

When I researched this emotion, I found this is ‘poignancy’. It turns out that we savor moments, we are more present when we know it’s the ending. Endings deliver significance.

A study on endings was done by social psychologists Ed O’Brien and Phoebe Ellsworth. They wanted to see how endings shaped people’s judgment. So they packed a bag full of candy and headed to a busy area on the University of Michigan campus. They set up a table and told students they were conducting a taste test of some new varieties of Hershey’s Kisses that contained local ingredients.

The researchers saw that, participants who knew they were eating the final chocolate of a taste test enjoyed it more, preferred it to other chocolates, and rated the overall experience as more enjoyable than other participants who thought they were just eating one more chocolate in a series. They found that at the core of meaningful endings is one of the most complex emotions humans experience: poignancy, which is a mix of happiness and sadness.

Poignancy delivers significance. That’s why these memories of endings last. Endings can be a positive force. They can help us eliminate the nonessential from our lives. Best Selling author of Drive, Daniel Pink says ‘Closings, conclusions and culminations reveal something essential about the human condition: In the end, we seek meaning’.

How about living life with more of such moments? Intentionally creating more of these moments to savor everyday.. reflective moments with self, honest conversations with family, laughter with friends, coffee with near and dear ones, enjoying beauty of nature etc etc. How rich a life would that be! How meaningful a life would that be!

Living an extraordinary life is not about living a philosophical life but about a meaningful one rich with moments that matter.

Like Dan Millman in his book ‘Everyday enlightenment’ says, “When people ask me abstract questions about time, or space, or reincarnation, I may respond by asking whether they exercise regularly, eat a wholesome diet, get enough sleep, show kindness to others. What good to attend a place of worship on Saturday or Sunday if we lack compassion on Monday?”