I had written this blogpost Reason, Season or Lifetime ? way back in 2020. Today I just got off the phone with a friend whose loved one is unwell and she was remembering how much the person meant to her. The spiritual connection is forever, but in this lifetime, that relationship seems to have come to the end of its season.
As I shared the older blogpost with her, I just felt it might be relevant for many others, given the tragic incidents from the last few days. … Life is tenuous, tender and everything seems to be like “blink and you miss”. But life is also tenacious and wonderful if we just go with the flow! It’s much harder to swim against the current, but it’s also exhilarating. Try swimming against the current and if you succeed, rejoice. Sometimes, when you get tired, just flow with the current and see where it takes you. That might be just the place you needed to be.
I keep thinking of the one lone survivor of the Air India plane crash – we can call him lucky, but he will also be carrying the deep guilt of having escaped death, while his brother lost his life. May Bhagwan grant him strength to go on and live his life to the fullest.
There is doom and gloom everywhere, starting with the Pahalgam Hindu massacre… then the worst air disaster in nearly two decades, the same day there was a train coach that derailed, the stampede after RCB won the IPL and yesterday it was the Pune bridge collapse. Choose to focus on these incidents and life looks bleak.
In the same time, the World’s highest rail arch bridge, over river Chenab was inaugurated, India’s poverty has reduced significantly (25 crore people lifted out of poverty), terrorist locations in Pakistan were hit with precision and the de-escalation happened quickly, India’s Akashteer (iron dome) worked beautifully and many countries sat up and took notice, the FTA got signed with the UK, Modiji is attending the G7 summit in Canada – a clear indication of Bharat’s rise in geopolitics, the individual deities’ temples were completed at Ayodhya Dham, Gukesh won against Magnus Carlsen, Indian athletes performed brilliantly in Korea and Taiwan athletics meet, Patna airport got a new modern terminal …. there is much to feel happy about.
Choose to focus on what’s going well, it helps.
Reposting my old blogpost below –
Long before the social media era, when email was the only means of communication, someone forwarded this note to me and the message stuck with me. The link to this message is – https://www.nannet.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Reason-season-lifetime.pdf.
Here’s the screenshot –
Its a beautiful message … some people come into your life for a reason, some for a season and some others for a lifetime. Many of us never learn this truth early in life and suffer when someone leaves our life after giving us a lesson or turning our life in a better direction. Nothing else can explain, why certain friendships continue for a long time and suddenly something happens and while you don’t have a fight or disagreement, it just fizzles out. A statement by a dear friend upset me so much that I wanted to never speak to her again – maybe her part in my life was coming to an end. I struggle a great deal with letting go of relationships…. so I pulled this message out and read it a few times.
Nothing else explains why suddenly a cousin of mine and I became fast friends when we had hardly interacted in 47 years !! Even at work.. the person you think of as a friend turns out to be your nemesis, or some colleague becomes a friend for a lifetime, or some friend introduces you to an acquaintance of theirs and your friend is no longer as close as the acquaintance !
We also mistakenly invest in a relationship assuming its for a lifetime, ignoring all the red flags that stare you in the face, when that person is actually there for a reason and will be gone in an instant. A dear nephew of mine went through a “ghosting” experience …. precisely a case of mistaken-identity of the person involved, not realising she was there for a reason and not a lifetime. This applies to parents, siblings, co-workers, friends, relatives … pretty much every human being that touches you in a given lifetime. Some children lose their parent(s) early in life – that was probably because they were just to be the reason for you to be born. Likewise, children passing on when they are young .. they were there for a season, to teach you something, to touch your lives in a positive way and to leave their imprint in your life.
While Karma explains why we have certain experiences, this message is helpful in dealing with those experiences related to relationships with others.
Let go … knowing fully well, if that person is for a lifetime, he/she will be right back and if it was just for a reason or season, then just let go, with gratitude and thanks.
Wonderful, Bindu. From the other side of the world, you are saying essentially what I’ve asked since childhood: “Why can’t people just love each other?”