So many events keep taking place in our lives that shake our existence and we find no reason for the same. There are accidents where we have no role, we encounter critical illness of the family members, prolonged legal disputes, marital disputes, death of near and dear ones, false allegations in the career, sudden loss of money, and so many other things that shake us from inside. Different people take these events differently and how they take the events, decides their future.
Some people have a Victim Mindset. They keep themselves at the center of the universe and feel that everybody else and the entire universe is just there to serve them. The moment something happens to them that they do not like or did not expect, they start playing the victim. They will start crying and seeking sympathy sending a signal that they should be taken care of. People should pay attention to them and their pain and recognize what injustice has been done to them. People with this mindset try to substitute the pain of loss with the social validation that comes with public sympathy. They do not dare to face the loss without such support.
Some people have the Blame Mindset. They try to blame others for their bad times. In case of accidents, they will keep cursing the person responsible for the accident, in case of medical issues, they will keep cursing the doctors and hospitals, in case of legal disputes, they will curse the opponent, in case of job-related issues, they will curse the boss and the employer, and in case of death, they will just curse the God. By cursing others, they are trying to somehow do away their pain. A blame mindset either leads to revenge or bitterness. When the person causing the loss is identified, such as in cases of accidents or legal battles, such people try to fix them and make huge efforts to put them to task. When the person causing the loss is not identified, they become very bitter inside and start developing some sort of anger against the whole of the world and slowly start killing them. Thus, they too do not dare to face the loss and find an escape route in the form of revenge or bitterness.
Some people have a guilt mindset. They have a very strong sense of Doesrship. Though there may not be a direct correlation, they start finding faults with themselves. Why did I not take my parents to a particular hospital, why did I not notice the flawed personality of the person who got engaged to my sister before marriage, why did I not counsel my kids to avoid the sufferings they went through, why did I not take care at the workplace to avoid loss of the job. Post-event, their brain makes all these stories and starts questioning itself about the decisions that it could have taken had it known all these facts. They consider themselves to be superheroes and therefore feel a sense of loss more because of their failure to avoid the situation. They too do not dare to face the situation and find an escape route by feeling guilty and pleading guilty before the others.
There is another mindset and that is the Destiny mindset. Such people too are not able to face the loss and find an escape route of destiny. They feel that there is some God sitting somewhere who has decided the destiny of everybody and whenever there is some loss taking place, they just put the entire blame on the destiny. What can we do? Everything happens as God desires. That is also a defense mechanism to get away from the feeling of loss. It brings a lot of confusion to life. Because the very next moment we have to make the decision and we do not know what God desires. Since we have convinced ourselves that everything happens as per the desire of God there is a conflict inside whether to put in the effort or not. Because the results are dependent on the desire of God we get trapped in such conflicts in our lives with such a mindset.
The spiritual mindset is something fundamentally different from the rest of the mindset. Such a person does not place himself at the center of the universe. He realizes that all the matters in this world are temporary and so is his body and every other body. He realizes that we have come to this world, to experience different events so that we can grow. These losses are not problems but challenges. They understand that after playing the game, the body will die and the unit will be a part of the largest pool of consciousness. That is why they just want to play the game of life.
Buddha says that we can not learn to live until and unless we learn to die. The moment we understand death as the reality and the reality of death, everything becomes easy. We know that this body is ever-changing and so many bodies are dying each day. It's like a batsman getting out on the field and returning to the pavilion to be ready to play the next match. There is nothing to feel as a victim or put the blame on the bowler or to feel the guilt of not having played well or put the blame on destiny. We just have to be ready for the next match improvising on the last game. That makes us full of energy and enthusiasm all of the time. I was really glad to meet one friend who had to go to jail due to certain circumstances and he took it as an opportunity to make reforms in the jail itself and make a difference in the lives of jail inmates who were suffering due to lack of resources to fight their case and systemic insensitivity.
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