STRUGGLE ENDS WHERE GRATITUDE BEGINS

STRUGGLE ENDS WHERE GRATITUDE BEGINS

I came across this beautiful sentence a few days back.

There was this story of a young man who is so fed up of his life, his poor paying job, his nagging wife, the daily expenses, his daily commute in the overcrowded local train in the city of Mumbai that he keeps praying to God to end all this and finish his life. Once he gets some throat infection for which he goes to see a doctor. The doctor takes some blood samples and tests them. He is found to have lung cancer. When he is told about this, his world crumbles in a million pieces. He thinks that his wish, which actually is not his wish, has come true. He panics, fear grips him and the thought of death breaks him. However, there is a twist here. The doctor has mistakenly given him another patients’ report and declares him to be hale and hearty. Suddenly there is light in his darkened life. The gratitude he feels to be alive more than makes up for his daily struggles, which now pale in the background giving him the joy of living through all that. The story ends with this sentence.

I pondered over the story. 

The story speaks volumes about the human psyche. We all go through troubled times, sometimes so prolonged and consistent, that we casually say, I would rather be dead. We think like this because we know for sure that death is nowhere on our minds. It’s just a fleeting thought. One that we don’t believe even in our innermost mind. One that is hollow and of no significance in our life that is going on in spite of all our troubles. It’s really not serious. Circumstances change, things get back on track and the difficult times are over. So does the thought. Life continues unhindered and we forget our past with two beautiful words, ‘time heals’. The low patch may strike again and so does the thought of deliverance. But then again, it is never taken seriously.

In short, we take life for granted. We never spare a thought for the gift of life that comes with every sunrise. For most of us leading ordinary lives we believe that struggles and problems come as a part and parcel of life. But when they come, we curse the day, we curse the stars and we curse our destiny. We feel helpless, we feel victimized, we feel destined to doom. All that life has given us just gets washed away in that difficult moment. In our blinding moment of unhappiness and sorrow, we are unable to look at what we have rather than what we don’t at that point of time.

The moment of realization comes when the most precious gift seems to slip from our hands, as that happened to the protagonist of this story. Suddenly when he saw the sand slipping out from the sand clock, he wanted to live more than anything else in the world. He wanted his wife to nag him, he wanted to face the troubled job situation and he wanted to go through life’s daily struggles.

The story brings on the beauty of what this one life is. The gratitude he feels to be alive makes him happy enough to go through life’s struggles.

I thought hard over the profound sentence.

I feel gratitude that I believe in that Supreme force that looks after us, smiles upon us and walks with us through all our struggles.

I feel gratitude to the fact that I wake up every morning to see the sunrise, hear the twitter of sparrows (now getting extinct in urban areas), sip my steaming cup of coffee, check my mobile for new forwards and know that my loved ones are doing good today!

I feel gratitude that I go out every day to my work place, enjoy the old and new filmi songs as I drive through mad traffic and madder roads, turn myself into the good doctor and help suffering souls to heal and get back to their routine. The struggle to survive in an environment that can sometimes threaten my job and my sanity seems irrelevant given the happiness that I have a work place.

I feel gratitude that I have a world around me filled with caring, honest and compassionate family and friends. With the pace of life threatening to break old relationships, I still have tons of them who find time to share a word or two, share a gossip or two, share a pain or two and fill my day with usual mix of love, anger, envy, sadness, regret and pure, pure joy! The plethora of emotions that define our day.

I feel gratitude that I go through the day, sometimes down with an illness or two but most of the times, hale and hearty. I feel gratitude that I have enough to feed my family and any number of guests who I would love to have. That I have been granted more than enough to feed strangers too. I have kitchen fires that burn anytime of the day, never short of happiness and sumptuous food.

I feel gratitude that I have the freedom to choose what I wear, what I eat or drink and make choices, even though sometimes the choices I make may have gone horribly wrong. I feel gratitude that I garnered the strength to rise from a deep, deep fall when I took the wrong turn.

I feel gratitude that the roof over my head never leaks, the hand in my hand never leaves me and the loving arms of my two beautiful children always hug me with intense, yet tender love.

I feel gratitude that I come across rude, dishonest and untrustworthy human beings who teach me that there is more to life than what we naively look at. That such people prepare me to be strong, expect the unexpected and value those who really mean something to me and are genuinely good to me. That such people make me more aware of what gratitude for everything I have is!

Gratitude for the flowers that spread color, the fragrance of the first rains on the parched  earth, the little green twig that breaks through the stem, the sorrow of the grey-black mountains and the dying rivers , the cacophony of the undisciplined traffic, the dull routine, the joy of birth and the intense pain of death that put some years in me and the adventurous unpredictability of life.

Little things that make up our day. The familiar roads, the peace of the temple, the faces that smile, the hands that beg, the laughter from the hearts of people living on the edge, the high-fives of the young and restless, the energy of the school grounds, the street fights and the crime, the justice denied and the justice delivered. That our life is a melting pot of events and people and the world where we live.

I feel gratitude for giving me the chance to see, feel and live through this.

I feel gratitude to be alive and feel alive.

On a lighter note, it is about your own personal “haves and have not’s”

Struggle ends where gratitude begins.