Find the reason for the answer

On a casual conversation one afternoon a friend mentioned that there are so many things that happen in our lives for which we do not have an answer, especially bad things. We have questions that are unanswered. To this I responded by saying when we do not find answers we find reasons and those reasons become the answers.

This thought came randomly and we discussed a little further. I have often heard people say that there’s a reason for everything that happens in our life. Nothing happens without a reason. Truly there are questions deep inside nobody can answer: a child dying without seeing the world, a healthy person getting an incurable disease, a natural disaster taking many lives, a family losing children and so on. We do not stop at the question.

As humans we have the innate ability to find reasons for everything and that’s what keeps us going no matter what. In the end the reasons are the answers we find.

Words have power

We have a mass in the school chapel every first Saturday of the month and I have been a part of it for the past four years. We have a team of three who meet for 20 minutes on Friday afternoon and practice singing. Last week we had the mass on Friday late afternoon and I was very tired by the time I got home. and sawith no energy to do anything. My daughter called me for music practice but I said I will come in sometime.

My mobile beeped and there was a message from the head of the school that she wrote “I love it when you sing.” I instantly felt so alive. I went and told my daughter. All my tiredness vanished and I was up and alive with fresh energy. We practiced for an hour after that.

Just a word of appreciation can make so much of a difference. Every day we have the opportunity to appreciate and motivate people. We have nothing to lose. It can make a person alive. A positive word from a person in leadership position is always motivating.

Suppression, if not oppression

I was having a conversation with my daughter. The world we live in has changed a lot. In the past there was much oppression in the world. People’s rights were taken away, they were made to live in fear, at gunpoint and even in inhuman conditions. The world is much better today.

Having said that we still are dealing with suppression. If oppression is external, suppression is internal. As, people, in many parts of the world, we are made to suppress our feelings, desires and dreams. Worse is there are times when we suppress our own feelings. We don’t say things because the society or the community we live in, will not accept. Anything out-of-the-box is alien even today.

When a child cries we ask “why are you crying” and when he grows up we ask him “why are you talking too much?” Even laughter is to be controlled as some people consider it as indiscipline. Difference of opinion is often taken as disrespect by people elder to us. Children live in fear as they are not allowed to express. Depression is often the result of lack of opportunity for expression. Even though we are not oppressed we often live with suppression.

The Indicator factor

Driving around town sometimes calls for word-fight. I stopped my car to let two other cars reverse from the lane I wanted to get in. There was a jam. The sin I committed was that I didn’t use the indicator to turn left.

A woman walked up to my car and started banging the car window. Startled I looked and rolled my window. She shouted at me as if I had murdered her husband. She said I cannot park here and she’s not getting the way to turn left to the lane, the same lane I wanted to take. I reacted by shouting back at her explaining why I had stopped and not parket. She didn’t stop shouting (I think she had just fought with her husband). I usually don’t react the way I did today. I didn’t like it myself. I felt a strange pain in my chest. At other times when people shouted at me I would just smile, say sorry and carry on. Today it was different.

I started to think that anger truly is not a healthy thing. If the car indicator created the trouble for me, the pain is an indication that angry shouting is harmful. We do shout when we cheer up our favourite team but that’s not in anger. I think the best way to deal in such a situation is not to react, just respond and carry on.