Musings of a Touched Soul

How does an event qualify as interesting? Probably when it attracts your attention for a considerable period of time. If so, how do you define a memorable event. Could be when the said period of time is considerably larger. So what is a life changing event? According to me, it is when an event lingers in your mind for such a long time that it actually starts altering your daily lifestyle or thought process. Such events are of course rare if not almost nonexistent in an average person's life.

What is queer is the fact that an event which is life changing to one person may not even qualify to be interesting to another. It might be something he has already witnessed or experienced or something which doesn't concern his life at all. You are wondering where I am going with this. What is all this blabbering about? Well let me narrate a story to u.

I was once sitting in the college canteen (Back in the time when it was actually kind of good) with a couple of friends and complaining about the poor quality of Chinese food being served to us. Of course most of us were expecting the food to be of top quality while forgetting that a dish used to cost us just 40 rupees. Anyways, I noticed that the table next to us was occupied by a father and a son. It was obvious that the father was a construction worker, one among the hundreds that work on our campus and his son also seemed to be a child laborer (Or maybe just used to help his dad) of sorts from his attire. They were both enjoying a meager meal of white rice, sambhar and a few accompaniments. And I use the word enjoy because u could see how happy the child was from the way his eyes were lit up. He was so happy and proud of his dad and he felt special to have a meal from our canteen rather than from his usual labor camp.

That day I saw something which I rarely see in this college. The child was content. He was truly happy and moreover satisfied with his life. Human nature is really weird. We are all confused and tricked into believing what we want in life is money, fame, a good job and what not. But what a human soul actually yearns for, is satisfaction. To be content in whatever field and in general be satisfied.

I couldn't sleep well that night. My mind returned to the scenes of that afternoon and I couldn't help but wonder, what have I done which makes me better than that boy. Why is it that my family has money to educate me whilst his family doesn't. It's not on the basis of his or my achievements obviously for he would most probably be more hardworking than me. What have I done to entitle me such a comfortable and blessed life?

I called up my mom (Childish maybe but trust me she is good at all this) and told her the whole story. She told me that in life there was a certain amount of luck. I was born into an affluent family while he wasn't. She said that our ancestor tried to explain this occurrence as a result of our doings in our previous life's. Karma you could call it I guess!

Ah! Another variable. The doings of our previous life. It's as if god devised a fail proof program. He declared a variable "past" as an integer and assigned it to zero. After each life a value would be added or subtracted to this variable and in the next run of the iteration the value of the variable will be checked and appropriate conditions would be applied to that life. It seemed to be simple and it kind of explained everything.As good as the program seemed to be, I wasn't entirely convinced. That sort of an evaluation seemed unlikely. God wouldn't be that mercilessly judgmental (Ironical, yes). There had to be another explanation for everything.

I pondered on this for days at a stretch and finally a solution dawned on me. A sort of an explanation. What if I was given all of this wealth, comfort and education not because of the actions of my previous life, but as a promise for the actions in my current life. Let me put it in an easier term. I would like to call it, "A student loan from God". God blesses me with everything a young child could hope for, gives me education, a good job and all that because he wants me to use it. And by using it I mean repay him by giving my wealth and doing service to help those who in turn were not that blessed by god.

Yes, it is a convoluted cycle but it actually made sense to me. If all our actions were revolved around paying back our debt to god by helping the lesser fortunate, imagine how nice the world would be. People would actually start helping each other without expecting anything in return(Yes, it does sound like a Nickelback song). So that night, I slept peacefully!

Now you remember how I started off. This incident was the closest to life changing than any other in my life. My perspectives on service, satisfaction and the true goal of life have changed. You have heard my story now, but I don't expect you to feel like I do. This was not one of those inspiring stories which would set into motion a rapid chain of world changing actions. This was nothing but a simple thought, but a thought I felt deserved to be shared.  All I know is that as long as I live, I will try to keep that small boy as my role model and the plate of white rice he enjoyed and the content smile on his face as my goals in life!