None of us is cursed. If we count our blessings, no matter
what we are facing, Life will be magical and beautiful.
A friend
wrote to me, in a bout of depression perhaps, that he felt his Life was cursed
– he was faced with a lot of hurdles in his business and career. He was hopeful
though that eventually things will work out for him. “But it is the waiting
that chews you up! That’s when I feel cursed and let down by Life,” he
lamented.
I have
felt like him before. But over years of waiting, like him, and quite like many
of us do, for Life to deliver what I have envisioned, I have learnt that being
impatient with Life is of no use. Life is not conspiring to fix you or me. None
of us is cursed. Things just happen. Things just are the way they ought to be.
It is our wanting our Life to be different from what it is that causes us to
imagine that there’s a conspiracy, that we are cursed – this wanting
is the root cause of all our suffering too. The best way to respond to Life is
to just go with the flow. Drop all expectations. Don’t react to Life. Respond
to it with acceptance. This does not mean inaction. This means learning to act
with what is than demanding that the situation, the circumstance, the context
be different.
Osho,
the Master, explains this so beautifully: “Life is a curse if you are not
aware.” The awareness he is referring to is about the true nature of Life.
Which is that there is no Life any of us has other than what is happening to us
in the now, in the moment. It is because we are imprisoned by the past – by guilt,
grief and anger over what has happened – or by the future – by worry, anxiety
and fear over what we imagine may happen to us – that we miss living in the
present moment. When we are living this way we are physically present but we
are not aware of nor are we in the moment.
A man
was sitting on the beach brooding over his Life – his wife had deserted him and
he had lost his job. It was about 4 am in the morning. Morning joggers filled
the beach. Soon children, who were vacationing in summer, started to arrive. By
5.30 am, there was lot of activity. Laughter and joyful screams rent the air. But
the man was nonplussed – he kept staring blankly at the horizon. He looked
lost, sad and beaten. A jogger paused by him to admire the sunrise – it was a
magnificent sunrise, a spectacle to behold. The jogger took a deep breath and,
to share the moment with the brooding man, more out of courtesy, than with an
intention to intrude, exclaimed: “Amazing sunrise, eh?” The man was shaken out
of his stupor. He sounded irritable as he barked at the jogger: “What sunrise?
Just leave me alone, will you?” Most of us are like that brooding man. And
because we constantly keep finding reasons to bark at Life (the jogger’s but a
metaphor), we miss its magic and beauty.
To deal
with and overcome this mind-made theory of curse and conspiracy, just follow
Osho’s prescription – be more aware. Stop and smell the roses, pause and
cherish each sunrise and sunset, celebrate the waxing and waning of the moon,
and feel the raindrops on your face. Each dinner that you miss with the family,
remember, is an opportunity of a lifetime lost. There’s so much that Life’s
offering on its menu for you. You will see and experience all of it, only if
you are there. Hello, where are you?
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