You appreciate Life’s inscrutability
only when you don’t get what you want or when you get what you don’t want!
This is an amazing truth about Life. It is
a revelation, a discovery, that often strikes you, dawns on you, when you are
in the throes of pain and despair. When everything is going per your
aspirations, your desires, you conclude that you are in control, that you are
the Master, that it’s all your doing. You matter the most to you in such times –
this is how it works: you do well in academics, land yourself a dream job, get
married to a person of your choice; you think you managed all of that ‘success’
on your own steam; because of your brilliance, genius and effort. Undoubtedly,
you have worked hard and efficiently. There has been your contribution. But to
imagine that the design of your Life was woven by you smacks of ignorance, not just
arrogance, of the way Life works.
I met a Tamizh movie director, a very
successful man, recently. He is smart, intelligent and very creative. He said,
“I don’t believe in dreams. I believe in subconscious aspirations, dedicated
effort and flawless execution. You make
your own destiny.” Poetic words. Makes sense to the rational mind. Except that
Life doesn’t always work this way. A very successful industrialist I know, who
went bankrupt and has clawed his way back into reckoning, and profits in
business, has this learning to share: “When things were going fine, I was
thinking it was my leadership, my acumen, my business-sense that were causing my success. When we started losing money and eventually went bust
as a business, I found that the same leadership and acumen__mine__were of no
use. That’s when I awoke to the reality that Life has a mind of its own.” I
have learnt that it’s a good thing to not always get what you want and to
sometimes get what you don’t want too. That’s when you learn from Life. The best
thing about pain is that it always offers a teachable point of view. And trauma
is a good transformation agent, a catalyst.
There’s no rocket science to why we__you
and me__awaken only when in pain. Life is best understood by asking the right
questions. And we pause to ask questions, explore with curiosity, only when we
don’t get what we want – or when we get what we don’t want! Interestingly, the
questions we ask may often get us no answers. Just more questions emerge. And
the more questions we ask, the closer we are to understanding Life. That’s when we realize that Life is, well, inscrutable!
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