Loving what you get makes Life blissful

Learn to love what you get even if you don’t want it.

This is what will make Life easier, simpler and blissful. We cannot always get what we want. Most often it may be something we just don’t like. Maybe it’s the way your eggs got done this morning. Maybe it is the bad headache hanging over from last night’s party. Maybe it is the non-reclining seat on the plane this morning. Maybe it is the partner you have. Or the Rheumatoid Arthritis that you have been diagnosed with. Maybe you were called in to work yesterday, on a day when you had to be at your child’s annual day at school. Whatever it may have been, is, or will be, hating what you get is not going to make you feel any better. Loving it will.

How can you love something that you don’t want, that you actually will prefer hating? Let us understand hating first in trying to answer this question. Hating is about not being who you are. Does a baby ever say it hates something? Does it say it doesn’t want this weather, this religion, this name, these clothes, this food? Did you as a baby say you didn’t like this or that. So, as part of creation, we are all created to be loving, accepting, willing. Hating something therefore goes against our intrinsic nature. Second, it is the nature of Life to keep dishing out various events, experiences, learnings, challenges irrespective of our__yours or mine__individual preferences. So, the most intelligent response to Life has to be to be grateful and love whatever comes your way. Because it is the same Life which gives you what you don’t want that gives you things you love too.

A young girl from a very affluent family went to her dermatologist and asked him to help her get rid of her pimples and acne. The doctor told her that this was part of her growing up years, driven by hormonal changes in the body, and that in a few years she would be fine. The girl got angry and tried meeting many specialists and doctors with the hope that she may find a “cure”. For months and years she spent all her family’s money trying to get rid of her pimples. Nothing worked. Finally, she was introduced to a lady dermatologist, who was regarded as the best in the world. The girl flew down to London to meet this doctor. The doctor advised her precisely the same course of action and counseled patience that had been prescribed by all the specialists that she had been consulting so far. “But I have tried all these methods,” lamented the girl. The sagely dermatologist, in her 70s, looked at her young patient and said, “Well, if you have tried all of that, all I can suggest further is that you just learn to love your pimples and acne, because this is what has been given to you.”

If you found the girl’s reaction to having pimples and acne so preposterous, don’t exult too much. Our reaction, at most times, to what has been given to us, is pretty much as immature as the girl’s reaction to pimples was. Just as pimples are an integral part of an individual’s growing up years, biologically, so are Life’s challenges__through giving us what we don’t expect or want. They are an important aspect of our spiritual growth. Loving what you get makes Life simple, easy and bliss.