Every time something happens in life, we look for a reason.  We are worried and want to dig deep to find out the root cause.  We sometimes even lose our sleep if we do not get to the root cause for everything in life.  I sometimes wonder if every effect  necessarily needs to have a cause ?  If it rains on a bright summer day, is it wrong ?    If someone who has never called you up for years suddenly decided to enquire about you on the phone, is it unusual. 

I personally feel that we waste a lot of time, many a time by investigating the causes rather than the managing the effect.  Why not live with the effect ?  Why not accept the event as it comes and evolve ways and means to deal with it.  In our quest to get to the root cause, we sometimes even forget to celebrate good moments in life.  Imagine someone surprising you with a chocolate on your work desk.   We spend more time finding out who did it rather than enjoying the chocolate.

I can recall many moments in my life where something happens out of the blue.  We can never get to the root cause as to why it happened.  It may not be worth the time and effort even to try to do it.  I recall way back in 2002 I had planned a holiday to a particular country with my family.  I had booked the tickets, accommodation etc.  But when we went for the visa interview, they denied the visa for all of us with the reason that we were potential immigrants.  I was working in Delhi and my children were studying.  We were living in our own house but still it happened.  I never bothered why they denied my visa.  I changed my plans and went on a nice holiday to another beautiful country.

If I had spent my time to invesitagate the reasons why they denied my visa, I would have wasted a lot of time and energy.  My holiday plans would have got spoiled and my family may have felt miserable.  But as we changed the plans and went to another country, we enjoyed the trip and never regretted the incident till today. 

 In life, many a time, we do not follow this principle.  We are always worried why it happened and why it happened only to me ? We spend sleepless days and nights worrying about it.  Why worry about something over which you have no control.  In my view, it is not worth it.  It is like worrying about the reasons for rain on a bright summer day.  Lets enjoy the rain rather than find the cause for the rain.  Can we control the rain ?  We cannot and hence why worry about it.

Another incident which has convinced me that we should not worry about the cause is when I moved to Mumbai in 2011.  I had settled in Bangalore and was staying in my own home.  I never thought I will move out of Bangalore.  But suddenly an opportunity knocked my door and we decided to move.  I never worried to find out the reasons why it happened to me.  This is because it helped me to move to a more vaastu compliant home in Bangalore.  It also gave me an opportunity in work in Mumbai, which I had never done before.

I am told that the wild lillies in the forest grow beautifully without any reason. They do not wait for the rains to arrive to blossom.

It is important to remember that there would be events in life, which occur for no reason.  When things go well, we generally do not bother for the reason.  But when things do not go well, we wonder – why me ?  It may be worthwhile to ponder, why worry for the reason ?  Let us learn to accept things as they happen and learn to deal with them.  It may many a time happen for our good.

Shall we try it ?

S Ramesh Shankar