MEMO FROM NARA...

In one of the blogs, I read a sensible sentence which inspired me to think about it a little bit. “You can’t always control what happens to you, but you can always control how you react to what happens to you.” – was the sentence. A beautiful sentence embedded with lot of logic and meaning. It is true that always we can’t certainly control what happens to us. Most of the happenings can be controlled by us but unfortunately, some of them like accidents, certain diseases, and failures are not in our control in spite of our careful precautions and preventive measures. Such beyond-our-control-happenings are called as ‘fate’ by some of us. Even such happenings can be met with confidence and little bit of controlled reaction. The reaction to a desirable / undesirable happening is important to be considered. It is always possible to control our reaction to what happens to us. The famous theory comes to my mind: To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. As soon as an event such as an accident occurs to us our body reacts involuntarily. Such a reaction is instantaneous and one can not prevent it! If the event is mild and less dangerous, the reaction will be also mild. However, we do react depending on the nature of the event and also the concerned individual. Patience and calming down considerably help us to think cool and take a decision either to react or not to react. The control (break?) we apply to our reaction will go a long way to manage what happens to us. The ultimate reaction we look for is to control our feelings, emotions and above all the stupid anger. The recent flood in Pakistan is a good example for this. Thousands of people died and hundreds of thousands of people are suffering. The condition they face for the past few weeks is horrible and miserable. Hunger, disease outbreak, inapproachability, continuous rain, loss of homes, crops, cattle, wealth and what not? - Unimaginable for most of us. Still it has happened in Pakistan our neighboring country. All that happened to those Pakistanis was not under their control. But the reaction of the people to such a horrible situation varies considerably with each individual. Each one has to get food, water and shelter. Families with women (old and young) and children fighting for life are unable to react except praying the Almighty to take care of them. Therefore, what happen to us are sometimes uncontrollable and still we need to understand our reactions to bear and contain those happenings.