Thought for the day Nineteen

O God, grant us the serenity to accept what cannot be changed; the courage to change what can be changed; and the wisdom to know one from the other.

                                                                                                                        Reinhold Niebuhr

Serenity or the peace of mind is something we have to get it from within. We can never buy peace like we buy many other things in life. We get agitated by many things happening around us. It could be a simple incident like someone blocking your way.

Imagine we are in a hurry to go out taking out our car. We rush to the garage from inside the house. We try to open the doors of the garage. It can’t be open. We get perplexed. We come out to see why. There stands a pair of bikes just outside our garage. The reason is simple. There is shadow in front of our garage. So, the bike riders park their vehicles and gone somewhere.

Where have they gone? We would not know. We live in a residential area. The bikers could be anywhere in that area.

So tough, isn’t it? This is the time when we should not lose cool. We should try to move the vehicles in such a way that it doesn’t obstruct our car being removed. On the other hand, we have no right to park it in the middle of the road to make trouble for the ongoing traffic.

Our character is such that we hate to disturb others. But here is a situation where we are victimised. It is not an impossible situation forever. This can be changed. But we need to be peaceful to carry out this.

There are people who do not accept change. In fact, the resist and even rebel when there is a change. But if there is a chance to change them, change them. Provided the change is good for them. They would not accept any change. But, you know in the heart of your hearts that the change would do good to them. Would the effort of yours go unnoticed? Still worse, will you be victimised?

For a good thing to happen, we can forgo some of our pleasures. Come to think of it, would we be totally at a loss by making this change? When we touch our heart and check, we come to know that we do not lose much. Then we should take it up. We should be courageous enough to bring the change.

The discrimination (Vivek in Sanskrit Language) plays an important role here. There are some changes which we can’t make. We should be losing sleep over this. There are some changes which we can dare to make. But this definitely has some repercussions. We should be able to have enough courage to accept these. We should not lose our peace once we have taken the decision since it would have been carried out by us knowingly.

This difference has to be taken into our heart in a proper way. Vivek should make us understand that we are accepting what we can’t change. Also we have to accept boldly the changes we have brought in has ended in souring and severing of a few relationships. Does this change make good for the person on the other side? Has the person been benefited more than we losing something?

Then we decide that we have taken the right decision and we need not lose our sleep over it.

The author prays God to give him strength. It is right because we need to seek His shelter when things go wrong. Just because we think that the change we are going to bring in the other person’s life has made that person feel good. May be that person will realise it later and thank you for your act.

But the present moment could be very treacherous and God’s support would be the best refuge.