The Gift

There are times when we curse the lives we live and are unhappy with the way things turn out for us. We wallow in self pity and always ask the question "why me?" And in order to have a scapegoat for all our frustrations, we turn to God and blame him for our circumstance. Don't tell me you have never been in a situation where you have done all this because we all have been there and done that. I know I have done that. Been horribly upset with the life I lived and been frustrated about how all I hoped never happened and how mean God has been with me. There's something very weird about negativity. It seems to capture your mind and then your heart and finally your soul. It makes you believe that life is unfair and that you are the most miserable person in the world. It takes over your senses and makes you lose all faith in everything around you. And this negativity is so dangerous, it sometimes even makes you forget who you really are.

Someone once told me one should always count their blessings. And I sneered at her saying if I was to count my blessings, I'd probably be more depressed than I already am because frankly speaking, I have none. It was the negativity speaking for sure. At that point of time I was going through a rough patch in life and feeling like my world has come to an end. She looked at me with a weak smile and said "Of course child, you have none. You have an amazing set of parents, a comfortable home to go to, a warm bed to sleep at night and hot food on your plate. But blessings.....you have none." I gave her a hard look of disgust. That philosophical nonsense wasnt going to make me feel better. Ok, I had great parents, so do many other people. I have a home and a warm bed and food, so do many other people. There was nothing great about all these things. A lot of people had these things. I wasnt something special.

A couple of years later, after this incident, I started working for an NGO in Mumbai. We would go into the villages and give medical aid to the villagers. That changed my opinion about a lot of things in life. Firstly, I started believing in luck. I always believed luck cannot break or make anyone; its all about how hard you work. But when I worked with children who had never known what it was to have a full stomach, I realized I had luck to thank for many things. The fact that dawned upon me that day is that in order to be in a position where one can work hard and get ahead in life, one needs luck. Being at the right place at the right time is something that cannot be anticipated. Its just sheer dumb luck. I saw the first blessing I had.

After my stint with the NGO, I moved to Delhi to complete my MBA. At college, I met a wide range of people from all kinds of backgrounds. Some from really small cities and some from fairly large ones. Most of them were at a complete loss of what to do since they had never lived away from their parents. Some weren't even able to sustain a month. I counted my second blessing. My parents had always taught me to be independent and adapt to all kind of situations. Unnecessary pampering had never been one of their traits. Thank heavens for that.

During the course of my MBA, I made friends with a lot of people in college. I must admit, I am quite popular amongst my peers, for good things as well as bad. I think what made the difference is the fact that right from my childhood, we had moved cities a lot. By the time I came to MBA college I had lived in 5 different cities and done my schooling and college from 3 different places. That gave me the advantage of exposure and the ability to be flexible. I counted my third blessing.

I also saw a lot of people being unable to grasp things. People who blindly did what they were told. People who were so mediocre, hypocritical, ignorant and highly unintelligent. The kind of people who have no sense of ambition or self realization. The kind of people who dont live but simply exist. They didnt read enough, they didnt know enough, they didnt even have the inclination to become better than what they were because they didnt even realize what the problem with them is. Their foresight, their vision, their mindsets are as narrow as the lanes of the locality where my MBA college is situated. I counted my fourth blessing. I had been lucky enough to have good teachers in my life who taught me to question. Teachers who taught me to go beyond the books. Teachers who nurtured the spirit of ambition and the desire to be extraordinary, objective, apathetic and think beyond the obvious. I had my father to thank. He taught me the importance of reading. He encouraged me to read from a very young age and I must admit most of the good traits I have picked up, I have picked up from him.

The day my perspective about life changed, I realised what the woman had once said was so true. I had so many more blessings to count that slowly everything that happened in my life looked like a blessing. I finally received the gift that nature has given each one of us, but we never realise it. The gift of positivity. The gift of a fresh perspective towards life. The gift of realisation that in every event of our lives, consequential or inconsequential, is hidden a wonderful gift.