Shaping Our Destiny

Imagine you are strolling on a sidewalk and suddenly happen to step on a river stone. The goodness in you picks up that stone and throws it in a trash can so that someone else does not get to step on it and get hurt. Imagine an aged couple coming walking down on the same sidewalk a little while after you move away from there. The elderly couple does not get to step on that river rock because you happened to remove it. They did not fall down. They were saved from a hip fracture that could have proved fatal for them! Since the river rock was not there, the old couple did not even have to think about it. They passed by walking and talking without any incident.

Did you see what happened here?

One small good act of moving that river stone away cleared up the path and saved the pain, and possibly the life, for the old couple, making their journey through life smoother. You became the agent of that change, or the force, that made a difference for someone else that you might not have known personally.

When you moved that stone away, you did not put a board out there, saying something like, “A river stone was moved by so and so to help others.” Advertising a good act reveals the yearning for the accolades rather than a real motive to help. If the motivation behind an action is not selfless, it does not count.

Our actions to help others may need to be intentional in the beginning. However, even small selfless acts, over time, become a habit. The motivation to do more good is spontaneous. That is what helps steer our destiny in a better direction.

Also, the river stone that you had to throw away in this example would not have appeared there by itself. There would have been a series of actions by many agents of force that took place. These forces, big and small, had been moving that rock all the way from the riverbed to the sidewalk. It behooves us to notice the role of the multitude of events that could have occurred even a few billion years ago, on every step of our way today.

You would also notice the reinforcement of the fact that we are all connected to each other.

We tend to think of destiny on an individual basis. The truth is that our future is shaped by each of our collective actions in the world. Even the smallest act of goodness from one can have a life-saving effect for someone else. We bear the largest share of the consequences of our actions, which gives us the incentive to shape our individual destiny. Our acts would have an impact on the world around us, as well.

Your every action affects you the most. The intention behind the act may not change the level of that effect. If you work hard to earn a good living, you might be able to get the best comforts for yourself, but you might also have an impact on your family’s future. The state of a family can impact the state of the related families and the community. The effect of your work is felt increasingly small, as the circle of the people connected to you widens. If one’s actions create pain and strife, those actions would be perceived the most in the immediate proximity. The community around would also feel the impacts, though in a diminished form.

Every action, therefore, shapes not just our own destiny, but that of the world around us. Our activities are controlled by the mind. How can we control the mind so that it may be able to listen to the conscience and execute the actions so that destiny is what we want it to be? Let us discuss that some other day!