Pushback!

My last three blogs – they are here, here and here – have generated animated discussion and calls for more on the topic.

It has also prompted some to ask deep questions.

One reader asked how I would react if my grandson was diagnosed with a terminal illness. Would I counsel him to think of it as preordained and would I, personally, accept this?

This question is not very different from another that is posed to me all the time about the “Good Thing, Bad Thing” exercise I recommend. “Professor Rao, there are some things so horrific that they cannot even be imagined to be anything but terribly, terribly bad.”

We have indeed been so heavily programmed that we think some things are indubitably, inescapably, terrible in every way. On a personal level this could be things like serious illness or death – particularly of a child – or severe financial setback or something like that. On a geo-political scale, it could be events like the partition of India, the Holocaust, the genocide in Rwanda, the Bengal famine where tens of millions of lives were lost.

Don’t try to think of such events as possibly good. You cannot kid yourself about this. Instead, wrap it up in cellophane and put it on the top shelf of your closet. And tell the Universe, “Where I presently am, I cannot think of what has happened as anything but unspeakably bad. Someday I hope I will develop the spiritual maturity to understand why this happened. Till then I will grieve but I will not let my life be defined by this tragedy.”

Recognize that many worthwhile endeavors such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) and the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) all began when the founders experienced personal loss. See if your loss can similarly transmute into a cause that brings good to a wider community.

Now let’s come back to the issue of whether everything that happens in your life is preordained. As I mentioned in my last blog, you cannot prove this. Equally you cannot prove that this is not so. Both are mental models. Use both. When you learn to use them in tandem, then life becomes friction-free and full of joy.

Suppose that a loved one is desperately ill. You do the level best you can to help heal that person using all your resources and the medical expertise that you can access. If you are unsuccessful and they pass on, you take refuge in the knowledge that it was preordained. The effort you put in was not ‘wasted’. It was needed for your learning and growth.

The concept is easy to understand. But it will take you a long, long while to really implement it in your life.

Keep trying till you succeed.

Peace!