Chance seeds and incidental sprouts

 

Brother, whenever you fulminate with pride, remember that we are mere chance seeds thrown around. If we land up in a corner where sunshine, soil, wind and rain help us germinate better, it’s sheer luck. Accept it with gratitude. Some other seed landed on a stony barren terrain, some in a bog, some in a drain, some on a waste dump in a slum. These seeds carried the same potential as you. They just landed in saddening, squabbling, feverish conditions. The potential withered in the womb of germination. They got stunted, fragile, poor, disadvantaged and enchained by crippling circumstances.

We are the products of nature’s unpremeditated plans—the open-ended process; the unplanned plan that progresses with fixed laws of nature. I know the flippant rhetorician in you will scoff at the proposition that we are the off-shoots of chance seeds. I know you have been customized to believe that the mankind has to forge his destiny; that we create our circumstances. But mind you, this boasting loquacity is simply a chance given to you by favorable winds.

One seed falls in squalor; the other in fertile soil—isn’t it already a favor to the latter? When you start acknowledging the role of so many circumstantial factors in shaping your better destiny—your birth in a better family, meeting supportive people, being present at an opportune time, favorable winds blowing, being healthy in your natural constitution—you will feel gratitude for what you have received. Once you feel gratitude, you will see the positives hidden behind the apparently tough situations you have faced in life. If the skin has a boil, you will be thankful that at least the bone inside isn’t broken. And despite all the routine struggles of life, you will accept that at least you are alive today, while so many died on this very day.