The Universe is NOT Listening
I once heard a story which went like this: There was a man who got caught in violent waves of the sea. The shore being quite far from him and with no other choice for him to swim till that, he prayed to the universe and asked for help. There was no answer.
Sometime later, a small tree-branch came floating across and he let go of it. He thought, “What could I do with a tree branch?” He prayed again to the universe and there was no answer. Eventually he drowned.
When his soul asked the universe why didn’t it help then the universe replied, “Who do you think sent the tree-branch?”
The moral of the story is also the reason for this post. Before we get to that, let me present two real-life stories which took place between 1998 and 2007. As you proceed further, kindly keep in mind that this is written from what is factually known in terms of events. What goes on in someone else’s heart or mind is way too complicated for me to write about.
There once was a boy who loved a girl. They were both very young when they met and she mostly kept quiet as their relationship progressed. She never really expressed herself and mostly ignored his feelings for she thought she couldn’t reciprocate. During the 1.5 year of their so-called “courtship,” she and him got together from time to time and had some romantic moments. He wrote a lot of love letters, made his feelings clear and whatnot. In the end, he gave up and stopped everything… because there was just no response. This was the not the end.
On a different continent, the boy met another girl and after initial trust, started building their dreams. They felt so connected and together that they made plans of spending the summer together. The boy took up an extra job to help fund their plans. And then January happened. The girl graduated, cut her hair and thought to herself, this was too early. The girl thought she needed time for herself. They used to speak a lot — mostly over Skype or Phone — and at some point, she claimed that she didn’t even speak with her close relatives this much. Mostly she liked to be by herself. It was much later that the boy realized this was code word for get-away and leave me alone. So he did. This was — again — not the end.
However, two very heavily invested stories later, the romantic in him died.
You see, there are some — let’s call it — eternal principles which exist on this planet. Singers call it “what goes around, comes around,” and pontificating monks call it Karma. All of which is simply to say that much like everything else on planet Earth, the third law of Newton is also applicable to actions. We know it by many names and lyrics and proverbs. In essence, all that’s trying to say is that our actions create our Karma and what we get in life is a direct result of that. It’s like the boomerang in that with whatever action, angle and force we send it, it will return to us in the same manner.
The reason I don’t like this universe is listening philosophy is because it spoils us. It makes us action-less individuals. We come to expect things from the future — without having any real reason to. We become the people who think and believe that things should just fall from the heaven for us. And when something does happen — however small or big — we take that for granted. It isn’t until much later when life slaps us that we wake up and realize what we lost.
Most of what is given to us — especially the things that are worth having— are blessings. They are the results of all those wishes of everyone who ever cared for us. And we are the stupid people who make damn lessons out of them.
This world in which we live is our action-space. And if there is such a thing called actions, love, life, experience etc., then it is given simply based on how we act in this action space. Our deeds produce results — the effect of which is not in our control. But we also add to the action-space either positive or negative aspects.
There is a reason why they say that IF you want to have something worthwhile, then BE the person who deserves that.
None of those two aforementioned stories had a good end. Both girls went about their life and over the decade that followed met others and went through much pain and confusion and hurt. One girl wrote back quite a lot, when her heart finally opened up and she wanted to express herself. But by then, their lives had already moved them too far from each other. She ended up marrying without love. The other one ended up marrying twice to two bi-sexual people and over her third try married someone else. Such is just the life of California for you.
And the boy… well funny thing happened! He met another person on a different continent and was told all those things he had heard before.
