One day, I was sitting in my sister’s home, and my nephew, Kirat, was putting an eraser in his mouth.
My sister shouted at him, “I have asked you not to eat eraser. But you don’t listen. You ate an eraser a day before yesterday and you had a stomach pain yesterday. Don’t you still understand that eraser shouldn’t be eaten?”
“But mama, I did not feel any pain after eating the eraser. I felt pain yesterday after studying”, Kirat replied innocently.
Kirat probably doesn’t understand that not every time, the effects are instantaneous. Rather, in most of the cases, there is a delay between the action and its effects. He probably thought the pain was due to studying, not due to eating eraser.
Do we understand what Kirat didn’t? Do we understand that there can be delays between the actions and their results? Do we understand that even if there are delays, the effects would always surface for the actions we have done? Do we believe in the karmic law of “As you sow, so shall you reap”?
Every seed takes time to grow into a tree. Some seeds grow faster than others. Similar is the case with our thoughts, words, and actions, they are seeds that we are sowing currently. Sooner or later, they’ll grow into plants and trees. Whether it’s a cactus plant or a mango tree – it depends on the seed we sow.
Looking at the tree or the plant in the future, we may feel it’s a co-incidence or good or bad luck because by then, we wouldn’t remember the seeds we sowed today.
We are afraid of taking responsibility for our present situation. Therefore, we blame it on others or pure bad luck. But our present condition is the result of our past actions, which we may not remember entirely.
It means that we should stop blaming others and start taking responsibility for our life. Once we do that, we’ll open for ourselves immense opportunities in the future because we’ll fully understand that our future is in our hands. Our every action, every word, every thought is impacting and building our future. Understanding this, we’ll be careful about our thoughts, words, and actions.
Are we thinking about failure all the time? Or are we thinking about success? Are we thinking of hard-work and creating value? or are we thinking of shortcuts and skipping work? Are we thinking about helping people? Or are we thinking about getting advantage from them? Whatever we do or think, it will eventually reflect in our life.
I hope the next time we feel stomach pain, we don’t blame the books.