Why on Earth Would I?

Why on earth would I want to live a famous person’s life for a week—even if the person is really famous?

I read the prompt twice, the way I read that T-shirt on the metro. Then I did what I do now: I sat with it before typing.

The question already carries its answer. To want a week in someone else’s life, I must first be unhappy with my own. The urge comes from comparison. I look at my life, I look at theirs, and I decide mine is the shorter end of the stick. Krishnamurti said somewhere that comparison itself is a kind of violence we do to ourselves. I did not understand that when I first read it. I do now.

Here is the other thing: every single human being has a list. Things that hurt, things unfinished, a name they are tired of hearing, a room they cannot walk into. Mine is long. Yours is long. The famous person’s list is long too—only it is hidden behind the fame, and nobody posts it on social media. If I switched lives for a week, I would not get the stage and the applause alone. I would get the whole list, in unfamiliar handwriting.

Think of Bhim, my Zendog master. In all the years at Kanzeon, I never once saw him look at another dog’s bowl and wish for a better one. He ate what was served to him. He slept where the mist let him. Some times in K4. Sometimes infront of Fr. AMA's room. Some times God knows where.  Am sure, he did not have a plan to become a different dog.

On the Saturday walks at Lalbagh, the four of us came together knowing only first names. No CVs, no papers to show. Nobody was trying to be anybody else, and perhaps that is why the friendship has lasted sixteen years.

So no, thank you. Give me one week of my own life, fully lived, with my own list in my own pocket. I have not finished with it yet.