THE OWNER AND THE OWNED





Pic.: Pradeep Nanda


In my last Post – ‘Accha Hai… Toh Rak Lo’, I had written about a simple yet powerful law of success:  “If you like it, keep it.”

I had said, “Don’t just say ‘Accha hai’, it is very nice… I like it. Decide to keep it. Else, it doesn’t become yours.”

Unless, we desire to have it, we won’t have it…

Satish, a dear friend of mine, wrote to me: “Sir, this means keep only good things?”


“Oh yes, yes, Satish,” I replied, “And, you know what: even the ‘good things’ are ‘bad things’ if we do not learn to let go of them when we have to!”

What did I mean by that? And, why did I say that?

We invest a lot of energy and attention in what we decide to keep, own. The quality of our life is decided by the way we view whatever we own in life… It depends on the kind of relationship we weave around our possessions…

So, as much as it is true, that unless we like something, we do not attract it… and unless we decide to keep what we like, it doesn’t become our own, there is also, a rejoinder to this law of success: that unless we learn, early, when to hold on and when to let go of the things that we possess, we will have difficulty experiencing a true sense of fulfillment… the silence in the soul…

Everything that we try to own will come to us, only if we deserve it. On every grain is written the name of the one who deserves to eat it… “Daane daane pe likha hai khanewale ka naam.”

Fate? Luck? Destiny?

Well, I don’t accept any of them easily… for the fear that I might end up my life like a defeatist, a lazy reactionary…

I do not like to think, that I am weak or helpless. I have great power to shape my own destiny and well-being. But, I also know, that, unless I learn to trust and surrender to a force beyond me, I will only end up trying to stand straight aboard a sinking Titanic!

My belief, that I own this or own that in my life is only an assumption… rather, an illusion. Yes, it has come to me, because I have desired it and decided to keep it – paying a high price for it even. But, it is not going to last long with me…

If I – the owner of it - am not going to last long, how can ‘it’ – the stuff that is owned by me?

It will go to the one who deserves to own it after it has served me… And, I just can’t stop it from happening…


So, Satish, the choice is ours… to like things which are ‘good’… to keep things which are only ‘good’… and, above all, be ready and willing to set them free whenever the time comes…

Keeping (owning) the good things can never be the key to our happiness. The knowledge that they have only come to serve us and not rule – is!



GERALD D’CUNHA

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