What if?
I have always had a strong belief that everything in life happens for a reason, a door closes for a reason, a disease that we experience is for a reason. The obstacles we go through are for a reason, the individual acquaintance we meet at an event and keep in touch with happens for a reason, even being in a particular place at an exact moment of our life also happens for a reason, and whether we believe it or not, this reason after it reveals itself proves to be a good one.
Life is perfectly planned, and our path is delicately drawn with the creative hands of our super wise creator. But we often get so caught up with the experiences we go through that we forget this non-doubtful truth. And once the experience and/or test is over and we get detached from it, we start looking at it with different eyes, and start wondering: how couldn’t we see that?! And how come we forgot this wise concept?!
I remember a story of a lady who kept trying to have babies for over 15 years, and one time she experienced health issues and traveled abroad for some tests, to discover that she had heart problems since childhood which was never discovered, where if she got pregnant and delivered babies, it would have put her life under huge risk because of this undiscovered heart problem.
We often tend to believe that what we want in life, is what we should get because it is the best for us and will make us happy, while the truth is what we want and think that will make us happy might turn out to be the reason of our misery, and of course this is not a must, but it is a possibility too.
The point I am trying to bring the attention to here is, what we already have at the moment is what is best for us at that particular time and it can either be the reason of our happiness if we look at it with unconditional appreciation, or lead us to our endless happiness, but we tend to look out from the window so long that we forget to observe and value what we already have inside the room.
I have seen and heard many people (men and women) get so invested in reaching their perfect shape and physical appearance, thinking mistakenly that this what will bring them the attention of vast number of people and consequently the happiness they are seeking, some of them try hard to lose a couple of pounds and get so obsessed about their weight to the point that they keep measuring it during the day and comparing themselves to people who pass by their way, and some try to gain more weight or maybe more muscles, while others go way beyond that and spend a lot of money, and even do several plastic surgeries to reach the perfect look.
And after they reach their aim, they get an instant thrill about their achievement, which fades away after a short period of time. Well who can tell what the “perfect shape/look” is? No body. I really believe it is something subjective. Also who said that reaching this “perfect shape/look” will guarantee you happiness (which I assume is the ultimate goal of every human being)? No one can do that too. In my opinion whether you want to lose more weight, gain more weight, appear in a particular look it does not really matter as far as you are tidy, healthy, happy and feeling comfortable in your own skin.
And if your ultimate aim was to please others, I can guarantee you will never be able to get the 100% approval you are seeking , because at the end of the day the billions of people out there will have two billion different eyes and tastes, and no one in the world will be seen “perfect” in all the eyes, but the good news is: you will have some eyes that see you the most gorgeous creature in the world, and the most important eyes above all should be your own.
Going from the “perfect shape/look” to the certain amount of money in the bank account, or particular position, or degree, or any thing we might aim for, all are the same. First of all no one can tell if these things that we aim for are going to be for sure for our good, and second even if we have them no one can guarantee our happiness because of acquiring any of them.
And so, we need to start looking inside the room, count the blessings we already own, be grateful for whatever shape we have, amount of money we gain, the children, parents, family or friends we have, and even hurdles we experience because it has been given to us for a reason.
What if I tell you that you have been put under the test of having some health issues, and you have been told to consume a particular diet, or you were directed to a specific club to do certain exercises and at that place you meet someone who offers your dream job, or you get to meet your soul mate who you never thought ever existed? What will be your reaction? You may want to turn to the hurdle you went through, embody it in a human form and give it a huge grateful hug for the blessing it brought you.
And what if you have been mistreated by your boss and in your way to get out of this, you registered in a course that turned out to be the door to your own business? What if you could not go for a particular trip that you were dreaming about and planning for a couple of years, to discover that at the same time and date of your trip a fatal disease had spread in the destination where you were heading causing most of the passengers to die once they arrived at the airport?
Who knows what is the best for us? And who guarantees that what we think is the best for us will make us happy once we have it? Actually no one can. And so, we should really live our life with full trust and surrender to God’s wisdom that any experience we have to live, especially if it was out of our control, or happened due to a mistake we innocently did, is happening for a reason, and surely it is a good reason, which will reveal itself in the right time.
We also have to keep practicing patience and increasing our ceiling of tolerance until it becomes part of our lives that we spontaneously do without any effort, which is surely not easy, but also surely possible. And we have to believe that what we have now will always be what is best for us at that exact time, and is what we need to be happy, while we will be able to experience this happiness only when we stop resisting, and start welcoming and accepting the gift, keeping in mind that it is all what we need at that exact moment in order to be happy.