A fruit-seller, a CEO and the key to intelligent living

Acceptance helps you face Life and cope with it.

Last evening Vaani and I stopped by the roadside to buy fruits from a pavement shop. The lady who owned the shop must have been in her late 40s. She helped us along with the purchase. Next to her cash box was the garlanded picture of a young man, maybe in his early 20s. It appeared to me that the man may well have been the lady’s son, as a red kumkumam mark adorned the picture.

Perhaps sensing my curiosity, the lady remarked: “Ayya, that’s my son. He hanged himself last year in January.”

Vaani was shocked. She asked her: “What happened amma?”

The lady replied, her eyes welling up: “I have no idea. One day he was there. And the next day he was gone. My daughter is married and lives in Pondicherry. She does not bother much about me. This boy was my hope. But he too has deserted me. I live alone, earning a meagre livelihood selling fruits.”

Overhearing the conversation, another customer, who was picking up apples, asked the lady, “How are you coping?”

Her answer to his question surprised me. She was very grounded: “I have just accepted what has happened as my destiny and go on with my Life. I have to carry on living, as long as I am here.”

After the purchase, as we boarded our autorickshaw to head home, I noticed the lady was engaged in a cheerful banter with her neighbor, a vegetable-seller. She looked beaten but there was an air of acceptance and equanimity about her. Her line – “I have just accepted what has happened as my destiny and go on with my Life. I have to carry on living, as long as I am here.” – stayed with me all evening yesterday and I reflected on it this morning.

Interestingly, just the other day, over the Pongal weekend, we met a friend. She is a single parent and heads a large pan-Indian corporation. Her young son had tragically died in a road accident some months ago. We were meeting her for the first time after the incident. I told her that we were sorry to hear of her loss. Her reply was awakening too: “People expect me to look sad and struck by grief. But this is the way I am. I see no point in either hiding my pain or drowning in it. I am just being me – realizing that my son not being around is my new normal. I am acutely aware that my circumstances in Life have changed, but I remain who I was.”

Isn’t it beautiful to be enriched by such sensitive, spiritual perspectives to Life? Both women represent diverse ends of a spectrum. One is a fruit-seller and another is a CEO. Yet, their maturity, their evolution, connects them – and offers us an unputdownable insight into intelligent living.

Whatever be the context or situation we are placed in, the simplest – non-suffering – way to live Life is to accept what is. It is only when we resist what is happening to us that we suffer. I am sure the fruit-seller is enduring a lot of pain – of having lost her only son, of having to eke out a living, of having to live alone. And I am sure the CEO is in the throes of pain too. She may not have material, existential, challenges, but her pain is not small by any measure. Even so, it did not appear to me that either woman was in grief or was moping and mourning or that she was suffering. This is what acceptance of any situation, of your Life for what it is, helps you with. Acceptance of a problem or a situation cannot immediately help you solve it or change it. But acceptance is a great device that helps you face Life, that helps you cope, that leads you to carry on living.

Two practical, spiritually evolved women – one learning: “The key to intelligent living is accepting what is”!

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10 years or 20 years, you have to go through what you have to

There’s no escaping bearing your cross.

The other day, at a mall, I bumped into a gentleman who used to supply stationery for several years to our erstwhile (now bankrupt and defunct) Firm (read more here: Fall Like A Rose Petal.). He’s an elderly Muslim – always warm and very affable. He was keen to know why Vaani and I had not been in touch with him. I quickly told him our story – of how our business had gone bust and how we have been going through a “very painful yet spiritually awakening phase” for the past 10 years.

The man beamed a benign smile through his white, flowing beard. He said: “AVIS bhai, I have seen in Life that everyone has to go through a 10-year phase which is often grueling. In our faith, we believe that this 10-year-phase belongs to Allah. You just offer yourself to Allah – to be tried, tested, shaped, molded by Allah! When you go through this challenging phase early in Life or in your middle-age, you are better off. If it comes to you in your old age, you will find it nearly impossible to endure it. Now that your ‘decade of trial’ is over in your middle-age, watch how your fortunes turn, see how Allah rewards you!” He gave me a hug and blessed me before setting off on his way.

I stood there and watched him disappear among the crowd at the mall. Over a cup of coffee later that afternoon I reflected on what the man had told me. He meant well. And he spoke from personal experience – having dealt with a cancer striking in his family twice and having resurrected a business that had almost gone bust.

Even so, I am not sure I am convinced that Life can be straight-jacketed into cookie-cutter models. I have understood that each of us has to go through what we have to go through. There’s no escaping bearing your cross. Some have to go through a 10-year phase, others have to go through longer, or perhaps shorter, spells. Astrology does provide some perspective – you can at least know how long a certain phase will last. But, on a spiritual plane, what is the point in having that information when you can’t do anything to alter the course of that phase or of your Life? So, my learning is this – just pray for fortitude, for inner strength, for courage, accept your Life for what it is and keep ploughing on.

I am reminded of a message that I got from Swami Sathya Sai Baba some years back. That night I was feeling beaten and felt I could no longer endure the pain of pennilessness, the grief of what we were going through and the guilt and anger of what I had possibly caused. It was a Friday. And out of sheer exasperation I went with Vaani to the weekly Sai Bhajan. My young friend Kumar, through whom Swami speaks, came up to me and gave me a poster saying “Swami wants you to internalize this message.” The poster had the following message on it.

I asked for strength and God gave me difficulties to make me strong.
I asked for wisdom and God gave me problems to solve.
I asked for prosperity and God gave me brawn and brains to work.
I asked for courage and God gave me dangers to overcome.
I asked for patience and God placed me in situations where I was forced to wait.
I asked for love and God gave me troubled people to help.
I asked for favors and God gave me opportunities.
I asked for everything so I could enjoy Life. 
Instead, He gave me Life so I could enjoy everything.
I received nothing I wanted, I received everything I needed.

I believe I got that poster that day because I needed to receive the message it carried. I am not a great champion of the popular theory around God. But I do know that a Higher Energy guides our Life. Important, over the past decade Vaani and I have come to relate completely with the poster’s message. We have seen this again, and again, and again – “We have received nothing that we wanted, but we have received everything we needed”. And so we remain soaked in gratitude and humility.

This is why I truly believe that no matter what you are faced with, you must always go with the flow. Whatever comes your way, embrace it. And whatever be the tenure of a challenging phase in Life, remember, you have to go through what you have to. Go through it in total acceptance, in complete surrender. Because every experience unfailingly teaches you to be happier and stronger.