What Happens to you

Things happen to each one of us all the time. As long as you are alive on this planet (and may be thereafter too!) not a day could possibly pass without something happening to you, around you, with people whom you know, at places you have been or wish to be. Incidents and happenings, like our thoughts are an integral part of our lives. Some of these things happen due to our own actions or inactions, and some times they are dictated, executed by others, and even then affect us and change our lives in ways we may or may not wish to. Now the point that I am trying to drive here is; what happens after something happens? How do you take it, how does it affect you?

Broadly speaking any incident or happening that influences us can be in only two ways: bad or good / encouraging or discouraging / positive or negative. That should make you realize that in reality how simple life really is. Just two options to choose from and at the end it really is upon us to choose the one that we would take away from an incident or happening. It's your choice at the end. The act, the incident may not have been your choice or doing, but the outcome of it, the way you tackle it and look at is certainly your choice. So the worst possible situations in your life can actually serve to be motivating and a cause to cheer while even the best possible things can give you sorrow and negativity. There are many ways of looking at it why would we mostly choose to be unhappy and miserable and sad and negative?

The one surmounting reason, according to me, is that most often we don't live in the moment that is in reality with us, which is 'now'. All our sadness and miseries arise out of the fact that we mostly regret about our past and our inadequacy to know or deal or to prepare for the future. Missing out the entire present. For most of us, the present 'now' this very moment is only a transition between the past and the future so we are always rushing through our present, regretting about the past and planning for the future. Seldom do we realize that the future too would become present one day and that day we won't be doing what we thought we would in the future, but on that day too we would be planning and pining for the future. We can never win this race, since future is always in the future and we can never be there, neither can we ever be in the past. Sadly, we don't have the time machine and time is unidirectional.

Out of anything in our life, there's always two fallout, a gain and a loss (in a manner of speaking), and I am not really certain if we can quantify one over the other. Can you compare the joy of the warm sun on a cold morning, to the joy of a mother's cooking wafting from the kitchen, as to what gives you more joy - intrinsically we can't, think about it, we may attach more or less joy according to our biases or mental conditions but in the fundamental level, a joy is a joy and a sorrow is a sorrow. Our sense of happiness and degrees of bereavement that varies from one incident to another is due to our own perceptions that often doesn't see the entire picture. Despite man's perpetual search for happiness (isn't that what we all want and look out for eventually; all the rest like money, fame, etc are only steps to attain eternal happiness), why do we constantly choose to be sad and miserable! This is an enigma that needs to be resolved and taken care of.

This is just my random thoughts on this vital choice making that we do almost every moment of our lives and hence I won't write an elaborate discourse on it, and it's suffice to say here that the choice and the power either to be sad or happy lies with you. It's totally your decision if you wish to be sad or to be happy, to take something as positive or as negative. To bereave for what you have lost or to rejoice at what you have gained (even when it may not be materialistically perceptible). If you start living in the present, in the 'now' that is with you and you are in it and see what a particular thing has got you and taken away from you, then you would see that out of everything, what you gain is always more than what you lost for a very simple reason. We never had anything to begin with, so whatever you ever lost was not really yours and whatever you gained is completely your gain.

So friends please smile more and live in the 'now' more. It's like willing and planning to fly yet keeping your feet on ground since that's where you really are. Perhaps my life is simpler and that's the reason why I am perpetually happy and positive and charged up, as many of my friends tell me. But your life too might be simple only you may not realize it. If you face a situation and can't figure out what's positive in it or why would it make you happy then do write to me and I would help you realize how lucky you indeed are.

Feeling of sadness and misery is also an addiction, you know it is bad but you can't come out of it, if once you get into the habit of accepting it and gloating in it. In this life and in this world, we actually lose nothing while we gain everything, we always move forward and never backward, we always move up and never down (why do you think heaven is always above and not below?). Everything around us tells us to be positive and happy, so listen to nature, listen to them and learn from this very earth that nurtures us. Just by being born we are already winners even if you do lose the race of life.

There are million moments of happiness that passes us by every day, just dip your hand into the heady concoction and fill up your bag with it and pass it on to those who need it. Happiness and positive energy increase when shared and given away.

Goodbye my friends, next time when you feel sad or miserable do think of this friend of yours and remember that it is ultimately your choice. No one else controls your mind, you do. And all you got to do is to see life from the right perspective and that will make all the difference.

And then will you see - What happens to you?