When Life Starts Questioning

In our life we often stop thinking when it comes to others. My life; my miseries; my happiness; my group; my solitude; every thing should surround me, me and me. Till I am introvert in this “my” matter there is no problem, actual problem starts when life starts questioning.

What I am talking is not the self analysis or analysis of life. No! but just few things with which we live our life almost everyday. There are moments we remember from recent past and mostly belonging to remote past is remotely available with us. Remembering events and analyzing them is the most crucial and important thing which we are supposed to do as a ritual and we avoid it because it is a ritual.

When we forget those moments which forms part of our experience and happens to teach us something, that is the time when life starts questioning us.

Last week a colleague of mine was deprived of promotion which was long due. He felt bad rather awesome as he had declared about it to everyone so he felt vulnerable. Seeing his mental state the very next moment our boss yelled, “Gentlemen forget about the past, concentrate on the present and let us see what is in store for us in future.” Wow! What a philosophical and encouraging statement, very touching and practical.

Why then our colleague refused to understand the statement of our boss? He cursed the whole management system beside destiny and the world before him. I couldn’t understand the reason of such behavior as few days ago he himself was narrating me his story of success in his previous projects and failure of his other colleagues. The reason was made clear by him for his success and other’s failure. He was successful because he was hard worker and hence a deserving candidate, others failed because they were not. He appreciated the management for their impartial method of analysis. Suddenly why was he cursing the same management?

What do you say? Was management wrong? Was that person not laborious enough as he claimed to be or that was only a game of destiny?

I say life had a question long pending for him, when he became successful and others failed, when celebrating and was living on the notion of being the best. Life asked him to be humble and generous towards others. He refused to agree then and now?

What should my colleague reply to life?

Let me take another incidence from the same story.

The very next day, appraisal of our boss came; he was expecting his promotion too. Remember the same person who was guiding my colleague the lesson of The Gita, “work hard but do not expect the result, forget the past, live in present” etc. unfortunately even he was not promoted. The very next moment he left for his house and applied for a long leave mentioning inability to join due to ill health.

What happened now to that Mr. Karma Yogi? Where all his karma gyan gone now?

What should my colleague tell our boss? Should he make fun of him or should he feel sorry for him?

I feel my colleague will have his first feeling as, “see, God has punished him for his misbehavior with me and for reporting wrong about me to management”. Ridiculous yet this raises a question, “Should we behave with others the way we do not like to be behaved?” Answer is “no, we should not”. Still we do, why? Assuming that the people who are weaker than us they cannot do anything to us. But, pause! Life raise all those questions to us what the others cannot ask.

We keep on running, running for our work, running from ourselves, running from life, running from anything and everything which questions our existence.

Life is nothing but our own karmas; we are alive till we are performing our karmas, the moment we stop, we quit, means dead. So when I say life questions, I mean by our own karmas. They come back to us in a different form but with the same meaning which we always try to avoid. It is upto us then to understand the meaning and rectify our future actions to avoid such a grieve repercussion of our own karmas. In Hindi there is a verse, “Boya paed babul ke to aam kahan se hoyen”, means “we reap what we sow”.