Flight without wings
Sometimes life becomes devastating overnight. An innocent woman, who never stepped out of home entire life, loses her loving husband in the early age with young children to take care of. The man, who is the only breadwinner of a poor family, commits suicide leaving behind his wife and children with his old aged parents. Parents get the news of their son securing the first rank in the board exam and the diagnostic report confirming cancer cells in his blood on the same day. A jolly going girl, princess in her family gets married to a sadist man and her life takes a U turn within months with all sufferings, mental and physical. A middle aged man who was active, energetic, ever-helping others, independent, suddenly gets paralyzed being unable to lift his own hand. We lose relationships. We lose jobs. We lose money. We lose health. We lose lives. Along with these and more than these, we lose hopes and time.
Sometimes the damages are simply the results of our own stupidity. Sometimes the loss is because of others whom we believed. Sometimes the suffering is because of our kindness or innocence. Sometimes, life goes beyond our comprehension and analysis – we call it fate, karma and so on.
For some of the losses, we get the reasons. For some of the sufferings, we get the answers. For some of the problems, we think we could have applied some solution that would have worked. But these are normally not the losses, sufferings or problems that we regularly encounter in life so that we can use all the reasons, answers or solutions to stop them occurring again. Hence, all the analyses that we make after the damage are just like post-mortem reports. We cannot make the dead one alive. By the time you get ready to share your solution with others, life would stand in front of them giving a different type of problem, suffering and loss. One-size doesn’t fit all. Sometimes learning lessons is meaningless. Sharing your experience is useless.
What really matters is how you respond to the problem, suffering and loss!
The man who encounters an unexpected loss in business may commit suicide. The girl who expected the first rank may go into a chronic depression if she gets the seventh rank. The man who is the victim of the corruption in the society may take the gun, enter into a forest and become a naxalite. The boy who is deserted by his girl may seek the shelter of a bar and become alcoholic. The middle aged man who is deceived by his wife may go extremely spiritual and become maniac about god.
What happened to their earlier dreams, their earlier responsibilities, ambitions, happiness and people around them? Can one disaster change the complete course of their life? Are life’s circumstances so powerful that we become so helpless and turn completely into what we were not?
That’s when our response to life matters!
The best way to respond to life’s disasters is not to respond, at least immediately. Death of dear ones, loss of the loved ones, shattering of a dream, and collapse of the life’s plan – all these definitely hurt a lot. The grief that is caused by all of these has its own validity time. But that’s exactly the time that’s most negatively tempting too. It tempts you to kill others, it tempts you to commit suicide, it tempts yourself to cheat others like others have did to you and it tempts you to feel useless and helpless against life and make you completely handicapped for lifetime taking away all the confidence from you.
I just stick to the golden words “Let the time pass!”
Remain dead during that time. It’s difficult to smile. It’s difficult to dust yourself up, stand and get going. It’s difficult to get back to work. It’s difficult to be as if nothing adverse happened. But it is not impossible as well.
If you forcibly try to deviate yourself or forced by others to get back to normalcy, it’s again a mistake. We are forcibly turning the screw in the wrong thread. It doesn’t fit appropriately. Give pain its own time. It should settle down like the sediment at the bottom of pond when someone throws stone. We cannot and should not forcibly clear the water. We should wait until the sludge settles down itself.
Slowly the sun rises, clouds scatter and pain fades away. It’s time to call back those incomplete dreams, bring back those left out relationships and time to start the joy of walking from the first step. It’s all new. At least earlier we had the fear of falling down from the great height. But it’s a new start. We are at the foot of the hill. Our wings may have been broken by cruelty of the life. But we have the dreams, experience and plans that can take us to the same heights without wings.
One day, after many years, when we sit back and think, we either repent for the hasty wrong step we took after the disaster or we feel proud for letting the time pass and taking the right route.
Let the time pass.
*****
Inspired by the song ‘Allah ke bande hasde..’.
