Destiny, and a Seventeen Year Old's Encounter with Failure

My dad often tells me, "Work hard. But in the end whatever has to happen will happen, you cannot control your destiny". I find this rather uninspiring. I always reply that if my fate is predefined that why should I work hard at all. Let this great 'destiny' determine everything, I'll just sit back and relax. 

I have nourished my dream for a long time now. I have worked very hard for it, taking each and every step I needed to, in order to get closer to it. Often times, there have been setbacks, obstacles. I have often fallen down. I have been told a zillion times that I should quit, that I won't be able to make it. That it is very difficult. Lotof people have given me examples of others who tried and failed.  But I have, always discarded all that. 

And today, when I find myself so close to achieving my dreams, I feel a little lost. I worked so hard for something which I thought was going to be a major step towards the fulfillment of my dreams. I was so sure of making it. Nothing could possibly have gone wrong, after working so hard. But something did. I don't know what,  but it did. That's when I remembered my dads words. 

I wonder, is there something as destiny? Is everything predetermined? 
Was I destined to lose? Is this life's hint that I should be focusing on something else? 

After three years of working really hard for one thing, when life hits you in the head with a brick, you're left wondering if you had been lost all along.
So what am I going to do? Am I going to abandon my dreams, believing that life has just shown me that I can't achieve them, that I have something else in store for me? Do I really have something else in store for me? Or is my dream the only thing that matters. Is this all an illusion? Or is it true. Is it really life's way of telling me that I should alter my path...
To be honest I don't know. ..It's hard to think of abandoning my dream when I have nurtured it and worked hard for it so long. It's hard to even accept the possibility that I might have been deluded all this while. 

Today, when my mind is haunted by the fear of failure, I seek control. And I am being forced to realize that my life, is not entirely in my control, that success may not always be proportional to efforts, that there is this thing called fate. I detest the idea that my life has to be controlled by some great force other than those within me. Does it have to be this way? And why so?....

As I seek these answers, I am reminded of the words of Ella Wheeler Wilcox, from her poem, “Will”- "There is no chance, no destiny, no fate, that can circumvent or hinder or control The firm resolve of a determined soul. "

Pleasures of Reading- “Sitting in Bombay, Experiencing London…”

You are in London. A young lady in black sunglasses bumps into you while you walk past the crowd at Lymington road, feeling the autumn chill in the air. The clouds part, and a great golden shower of sunlight pours onto the road. The young lady, who, you think is so improbably beautiful smiles apologetically and walks past. You smile back at the book and put a bookmark on that page, making a mental note that you’ll get back to it as soon as you finish dinner.

Novels, they transport us to another world, maybe another country, another city, another family, another background, another ethnicity, another religion, another personality. And soon enough we realize that we are seeing the world through another person’s eyes. Who is this other person?... Is it us? Or a transformed version of us? Well, that’s what it feels like..That person indeed becomes a part of us, so close that often it is difficult to say if he is us, or we are him. He is the character, the protagonist, in most cases, who has sunk into our subconsious and has become our companion, or an escort, to take us around his world, his life… his story. He takes through his story as we watch it like a movie in our mind, or, if it’s an extraordinarily great piece of writing, experience it vicariously, as if it were happening to us.

You get back to the book. It is an uptown restaurant in London. A few pages later, the culture of London has become like your own. Novels, they also inform a great deal about different societies, their cultures, their way of living. They do not directly inform, they reveal, in bits and pieces. The information just flows through beautifully with the rest of the novel like the mineral-rich sediments in a river. After a voyage of discovery and revelation when we get at the end of it, we realize that it’s become a part of us.

You put the book down and get back to your work. What a nice unwinding, refreshing break you’ve just had from your stressful unvarying routine of everyday life. Novels indeed provide an escapism from the humdrum necessities of reality. For many of us, they may create a world we want to live in; for many, they may show us the world we want to live in and make us feel far away from it, or they may just be an entertainment for some. But I believe they much more than just that. They are like a ship that takes us to distant lands, often it may get hijacked by pirates but that just adds to our vicarious adventures. They are like that most interesting friend of yours, whose stories you’re never tired of listening; only that they come to an end.
As Paul Sweeney once rightly asserted, “ You know you’ve read a good book when you turn the last page and feel a little  as if you’ve lost a friend”.

Do we most value the things that are difficult to attain?

Those who have overcome great adversity in life can take satisfaction from Thomas Paine’s assertion, “The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.” For people truly to appreciate their victories, they must be able to contrast them with the hardships they have undergone. To value their good fortune, they must suffer ill fortune as well.

In most cases, the greater the adversity the more proud and triumphant we feel on reaching our goal. This is largely due to the fact that we attach a lot of value to our time and effort. Thus, when we reach our goal, it becomes a lot more valued because of the time and effort spent in attaining it.

When we are kids, our parents give us money to go out and buy stuff. At that time the money is readily available to us and we keep asking for more. We don’t bother too much if we lose some or waste some here and there. We don’t attach a lot of value to it. That’s because it’s o readily and easily available to us. But, when we go out in the real world and start earning, it is then that we realize the value of money. That has suddenly become much more prized for us because of the time and hard work we spent in earning it.

Likewise, we might suppose that for a great football player like Wayne Rooney scoring one goal may not be a very big thing. But when that goal is scored at the last moment of a defining match it becomes so precious that he celebrates by removing his T-shirt and running around the field.

What matters is what we feel inside our head. If we have faced great obstacles in attaining something, it becomes much more precious for us. The most important fights to fight are the hardest ones, the ones that cost some people everything they have. Only by fighting such a hard fight will you truly value your victory.

Living in the Moment

One of the games that we played in my workshop (Apna Shakespeare) was the 1-30 game. In this game we all sit in a circle with our eyes closed, and count from 1-30 (one person says '1' the other says '2' and so on...)

Whenever there is an overlap (2 people say the number at the same time), we start from 1 again. But our eyes are closed so we have no way of knowing who is speaking when. We just have to feel the vibe and decide which the best time to speak is. It may seem easy but let me tell you it is not.

During the first few days we barely managed to cross 10. Jaimini kept telling us not to think about the end result. He told us, “don’t think about reaching 30, thinking about going from 1 to 2, 2 to 3 and so on. Enjoy yourself and live in the moment.” As we followed his advice, we began to improve. We stopped worrying about reaching 30 and started having fun. We focused on going from number to number and not from 1 to 30. by the end of the workshop, we reached 28. That is quiet an improvement from day 1 when we were on 6.

There is a valuable lesson here: don’t worry about the end result, live in the moment and enjoy the journey. As we grow older, we become very result-oriented.

                        “Yesterday is history, 
                         tomorrow is a mystery,
                         today is a gift
                        and that is why it is called is present.”

Live in the moment. Take pleasure in what you are doing. Don’t worry about reaching the end. Enjoy the journey, and soon you’ll realize that the journey itself is your destination.

My Experiments with Truth: DOES GOD EXIST?

There are many wild, wacky, bizarre, absurd, foolish and irrational ideas and beliefs when it comes to the subject of God. One hears many things related to this subject, different people have different viewpoints. Whether the truth is among them is not clear. And, of course, the big question familiar to all of us: Does god exist? Many people believe that he does; and is the supreme creator and destroyer. Many others (atheists) think more skeptically and refuse to believe in God without any evidence. Then there are others (like me) who are somewhere in the middle, they don’t completely have faith and neither are they ignorant like atheists; many of them are looking for answers, trying to find the truth.

Let’s look at some real life experiences and incidents, and see if we can conclude anything and resolve this dilemma.

A six- year-old boy, the only son of his parents was on his way back from school. As usual with children on their return journey, he was impatient to get back home. Without bothering to look on either side, he ran across the road and was knocked down by a speeding truck and killed instantaneously. The truck driver sped away and was never traced. An innocent life was lost, the man who took his life escaped punishment.

Is there a God? An all powerful and just God? The holy book promises: “No ills befall the righteous, but the wicked are filled with trouble” (Proverbs). The holy book asks: “Consider, what innocent ever perished, or where have the righteous been destroyed?”. Let those who believe in God and His infinite mercy explain why a child whose parents had committed no sin had pain inflicted upon them and then the man who caused them suffering went scot free.

So this was one incident that suggests that there is no God, or at least it does suggest that God (if there is one) is above the notions of fairness and moral rules, that apply to us mortals; He is in fact (if He is) one who is the wadda beparwah-the uncaring great one. 

Well, this incident and the conclusion that it provides does appeal to me as it would to many. But I have a reason not to believe completely in what it suggests. It has incubated out of my own experience.

In June 2010, I had an extremely rare and severe case of typhoid. I was in the hospital for nearly two weeks. It was a very painful experience, particularly for the first few days as I was living only on tasteless juices and also had to undergo many tests and scans. Anyways, getting to the main part, I was discharged after two weeks though I was not completely alright but well enough to go home. After getting discharged I was visiting the hospital for the medicines, tests, scans, and frequent meetings with the doctor continued. Till that time I had no idea about how rare and severe my illness had been.

Then, sometime in August, during my meeting with the doctor, he told me that my H.I.D.A. scan (it’s a nuclear scan to see your gall bladder) results showed that my gall bladder was still inflated and was not functioning, and that I would have to get my gall bladder removed if even after taking loads of antibiotics it didn’t function. (This is because a non-functioning organ can act as a carrier of infections). A fourteen-year-old is bound to get scared on the thought of an operation and the removal of an organ. (Though the body functions perfectly well even without the gall bladder) So, I sat there on the doctor’s chair, terrified at the thought of an operation. To the surgeon, though, it was no big deal, for him it was just a typical hour long surgery which he had performed many times. The other doctor whom I was consulting prescribed me with more antibiotics and told me that there was a chance that the gall bladder may start working. He told me that I was going to take another HIDA scan after two months, and if the gall bladder still didn’t work, it would have to be removed. Petrified, I went back home. For the next two months I ate cautiously, took the prescribed antibiotics in the hope that my gall bladder starts functioning and I don’t have to undergo an operation.

So, in November, I again underwent the HIDA scan and the result was astonishing. My gall bladder was functioning. I took the report to the Doctor and he was also very happy and exclaimed that there was no need for any operation. Then he revealed all the “dark secrets” about my case that were hidden from me so far: My case had been so rare that out of all the typhoid cases in the country, only 1-2% were similar to mine. The doctors in that hospital had never seen a case like that. And, they had held a seminar on my case in which doctors from all over the city were present! “Wow” I thought. “A seminar on my case, it was so rare!” It was blowing my mind. Then he went on to disclose that my case had been so severe that doctors had lost all hope that they would be able to treat it with antibiotics. They were prepared for an operation from the beginning. But he had told them to wait, and see if they could cure me with antibiotics. He didn’t want a fourteen-year-old kid to lose an organ of his body. Even though he knew that the chances were EXTREMELY less, he tried, and he succeeded. “It is all due to God’s grace” he said.

A doctor saying that I had been cured due to God’s grace? My case had been so severe that an operation seemed unavoidable? Then how did I escape it? How was it that I was cured completely with only antibiotics?

Was my illness cured because God (if He is) listened to my family’s prayers and his blessings got me out of it? Yes and No. Yes, because there is no other scientific explanation. No, because, well as the doctor had told me that the chances were extremely less but there were chances, so I might have been lucky. Atheists will most likely go for the second option: I was lucky to get out of it. But think about it. If I was lucky, why did I get typhoid in the first place? Why did luck favor me only when I needed it the most, and only when my family prayed? I am not concluding anything here.

There must be some supreme power that created us and keeps a watch on everything that’s going on and responds when there is someone need. Think about it.

P.S.-I'm not saying that there was some dude who wanted to help rescue his kidnapped chick with the help of some flying monkey. But there must be something. What do you think?