18 May Why did this happen to me?

‘Why did this happen to me?’ is a question my mom asked every day after she fell down and broke her hip-femur joint. It was a major surgery that kept her to bed for a couple of months. She was shocked, angry and frustrated because she had to depend on someone else to carry out her basic tasks. An otherwise cheerful lady she lost her positivity. People know her for her positive outlook towards life, for the happiness she spreads when she is around and for her generosity and kindness. Serving the poor in ways she can brings her great joy.  She is a lady of faith and has a strong belief in higher power, in God. It was very hard for her to come to terms with reality. When I flew down to take care of her, she told me that she did not understand why this happened to her.

It was a stroke of bad luck but it was teaching us life lessons. I know things happen for a reason. I reminded her of the story she told us when we were young, the famous parable of the mustard seeds.

It’s about Kisa Gomati who lost her only very young son and pleaded Buddha to bring her son back to life. Buddha asked her to go back to her village and gather mustard seeds from the households of those who have never been touched by death in order to make a medicine to bring her son back to life.

By asking her to find a house that had not experienced death, Buddha not only led her to a realization about the impermanence of life but the reality of death helped her comes to terms with it and grieve over her dead child. It also prompted her to support all others who faced similar circumstances.

I flipped the question and asked my mom – Why did this happen for us? Where is the silver lining here in the dark cloud? That let us see the good things that came out of the bad incident. It got our entire family together, even closer. Our children got to witness why a strong support system is important and how we work as a unit. My mom recognized how encouraging and supportive our friends are. She appreciated the good care she got from doctors, nurses, physiotherapists. She realized, she has grown stronger and has great lessons of resilience to teach her grandchildren. She now has a bigger drive to support the community. That incident is also encouraging me to reimagine health care for the elderly.

It is hard to understand why bad things happen in the midst of the storm. One thing that has helped me deal with setbacks is the mindset. There are some things we cannot control but if we focus on them, it is an “opportunity cost”, it is the cost of our precious time, attention and energy that gets drawn from the reservoir of limited resources we have.

It is not easy to do; still doing it makes a ton of a difference. The reason I am sharing this is because mindset applies to every aspect of our lives every day. It’s at work, in every interaction and every situation. We apply our mindset consciously or unconsciously. 

When you focus on what you can control, there is always something you can do to put yourself in a better position. When you focus on things you can’t control you tend to freeze, unsure of what to do, and get anxious.

By focusing on what she can do, my mom started walking with support, and by choosing how she wants to be, she is reclaiming her positivity and is on her path to recovery.

The mindset of focusing on what we cannot control keeps us stuck, stops us from moving ahead whereas the mindset of focusing what we can control builds our resilience and adaptability and helps us move forward.

The choice is ours!