In the year 1965, almost 40 years back, I was in a place far away from home, in my first job. I was for the first time away from home and unmarried. One day, I got a post card from my father that my brother named ‘Ramu’ of age 10, died due to drowning in the lake near our house. His body was found in a decomposed condition after searching for 2 days.
Ramu was the darling boy of our family. He was the second youngest. He was exceptionally good in behavior, studies, and helping at home. I remember him learning to sew on the sewing machine and helping mother in domestic chores.
When I got the news of his death, I was in mental turmoil. One question was constantly gong round in my mind – ‘Why did God take away such a good boy at the premature age of 10? Why? Why? Why? ‘ This question was ringing all the time in my mind, not allowing me to do my normal work or eat normal food or have normal sleep. This state continued for 2 full days. I was totally restless and inconsolable.
Later on, I came to know that my brother, who did not know how to swim, went to a nearby lake, along with some of his friends who could swim. When my father came to know of this, he thrashed him and warned him to never to go near that lake. It was also learnt from his friends that some time back, he came across a fortune teller sitting by the side of a road, with a parrot in a cage. There were printed cards kept outside the cage, with different versions of future written on each of them. My brother paid that man, that man released the trained parrot, it came out of the cage and picked up one of the cards spread out before the cage. The card picked up for my brother was read out by the parrot keeper. It read among other things, that he would meet with a danger to his life from water. This was perhaps working in his young mind and made him to seek out the danger from water, as forecast in the parrot card.
Let me come back to my constant agony over his death. On the third day of my getting the news of his death, I heard a silent voice in my mind. The voice asked me a counter question – ‘Mr C S Rao, how are you blaming God for your brother’s premature death? Did HE promise or even just tell you, that your great darling brother Ramu would live up to ripe old age? If God or anyone made such a promise to you, you can go to that God or person and blame him for breaking his promise. If no one had promised you, you have no business to blame any one or even raise that question. I got stumped by the irrefutable truth behind the counter question.
I was stuck in my thinking and forced to be silent. All the restless questioning in my mind for last two days stopped suddenly. There was some peace in my mind, after being in great torture for last 2 days.
Then after some time, a supplementary thought arose in my mind. As it is said in some spiritual texts, this world is like a stage. We are all the actors. Some are old actors, some middle aged and some child actors. As one actor completes his assigned role, he or she goes behind the stage. Some actors never return to the stage after they exit. My brother Ramu was assigned a child actor’s role. He played it very well and went behind the stage never to appear again. What am I complaining about? On the other hand, I should be happy that he played his assigned role superbly and gave all of us the pleasure of his company for 10 long years.
In spite of all above self explanations, I was still suffering mentally, at the loss of my dear brother. After a few more days, another wave of a thought arose in my mind. Why was I suffering? A thought came in response. I am suffering because of my own incorrect expectation about his life term. If I was aware about the uncertainty of my brother’s life and accepted that he may die any time, I would not have suffered beyond the practical loss of a very dear person. If I had totally absorbed the uncertainty of any individual’s life, not only his, I would have thought this way – ‘Yes, nobody guaranteed his long life, neither God nor any one. He could have died any moment but we are lucky that he lived 10 full years, to give us the great pleasure of his company.’
After these thoughts repeatedly circulated in my mind over a few weeks, the reality of his death did not cause me any further suffering. I was at peace with the occurrence of his death.
Later, when faced with come disappointments in life, another offshoot of a thought arose. If there is zero certainty about the full circle called life, how can there be any degree of certainty about any segment of life, like – education, employment, marriage, children and others? If the circle itself is uncertain, any segment of that circle has to be uncertain. If I could be at peace about my brother’s death at age 10, I might as well be at peace about the other happenings in my own life or of any other person. Once I accept the basic uncertainty I can deal with it.
The uncertainty need not paralyze me into inaction. Generally we believe our disbelief in our success far more than the belief. This is because of the negative mode in which we are brought up since birth.
It is rare that I have zero chances of fulfilling my goals. Not trying at all and missing the apparently available chances is foolishness arising out of my conditioning in the negative mode. The positive probability of success (of any magnitude), is as real as the negative probability. The negative probability need not be blown up. This attitude could motivate me to keep on trying to the best of my capability, to achieve what I like to achieve, with a positive attitude. Whatever I achieve this way, is a surprise gift compared with what I would have got by adopting alternative attitudes.
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- I shared this story with a woman attending my classes. She was on the verge of an emotional break down due to the verbally abusive and controlling behavior of her boss at work. She realized that her expectation of caring and kind behavior from him was a major cause for her distress. She accepted that she could not change his behavior and should stop expecting him to change his behavior. Instead, she had to change the way she responded to his abusive behavior. In the next class she reported that this change in her attitude reduced her distress drastically.
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