highway of life

As this is a holiday season in the US, I and my wife decided to get some devotee association. Hence we traveled to Bloomington, IL to attend a program there for 3 days. It was fun and spiritually enriching. Normally it takes about 4 hours and 30 mins to reach Bloomington, however due to bad driving conditions; it took me 6 hours and 30 mins. The drive was grueling and stressful due to dangerous driving conditions. At some points, I had zero visibility while driving. I was praying I reach my destination safely. Another thing that was apparent was the innumerable vehicles that got stranded on the side of the highways due to bad weather. This reminded me of something.
Our life is a like a journey on the highway where we travel towards a destination. Many people have many versions of their destination. For some people, destination can be buying a land, or becoming a successful businessman or engineer or father/mother so on and so forth. But I think the destination is the same for every single person in this mundane platform. But we just do not want to accept it and hence substitute it with various versions. The destination I am talking about is “death”. We all have to die in this world and after that we start again in a new life somewhere. So for this current life, our final destination is death. No matter what we are in this life, we have to relinquish this dying body. In other words, no matter what type of car (BMW, Benz or a Chevy) we drive on the highway of life, we eventually have to come to a stop in the name of death. The broken and stranded cars on sides reminded me of that inevitable death. While I was trying to drive fast, past many such stranded cars, to avoid such a situation, I had to accept the harsh reality that one day my car will also be stranded on the highway of life. The sooner I accept this reality the better. Therefore, the only way to save ourselves from this repeated break down on the highway is to just stop driving a broken car. We should take a car that never breaks down for eternity. In other words, to stop this cycle of birth and death, we have to go back home back to Krishna to attain our original spiritual bodies.

There is only one way to do that in this age of kali – that is by chanting the Holy Names of Lord Hari harer nama harer nama harer namaiva kevalam
kalau nasty eva nasty eva nasty eva gatir anyatha

"In this age of quarrel and hypocrisy the only means of deliverance is chanting the holy name of the Lord. There is no other way. There is no other way. There is no other way." - (Brhan-naradiya Purana)