When things go wrong acceptance of the situation is vital to deal with the situation effectively

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
All of us have times when things just don’t go according to our will. We want to do something. We plan to do something.
And it just doesn’t work out. So right now I’m supposed to go from here to New Zealand. But the New Zealand visa is not getting processed.
So I applied about more than 40 days ago, but they’re saying it will take 71 days. So I’ll be in America by the time I get the visa to New Zealand. So when we make a plan and it doesn’t work, it’s annoying.
But I was thinking about it, that it’s just that I want to visit New Zealand for a few days. And just when that plan is not working out, I’m getting annoyed with it. But it’s one visit not working out.
But imagine if you’re staying somewhere, and suddenly you’re kicked out of that place. And it sometimes happens. We are staying in a house, and we get a tenant in that house, and the landlord says you have to leave this house.
At least they give you some time. Maybe one month or something like that. Some decent amount of time is there.
But if suddenly we are told you have to get out of this house, or even getting out of a house. We may have some friends also at whose place we can go, some relatives we can go. Still, it will be so agitating for us.
What to speak of, if somebody is told to get out of a country itself. Sometimes nowadays, it’s happening in America. I was at a devotee’s house, or I was supposed to go to a devotee’s house.
I was going to stay at their place. And then, I was traveling from one city to another. When I was going to that city, I was going to stay at their place.
And about 5-6 days before, that devotee called me and said, I’m sorry, but I can’t host you. I said, that’s okay, but what is the matter? He said, we ourselves don’t have a home now. What do you mean? He was applying for an H-1B visa, and that extension didn’t happen.
So, he was planning to host me and organize my program, but before my programs, he had to leave the country. So, there’s so much insecurity. And, he had his whole life over there.
He had his job, his family, his children getting education. Suddenly, he had to leave. But even when he had to leave, he was Indian staying in America, he could go to India.
He had his parents, his larger family, he had his property in India. But imagine, if somebody is evicted from a country, and, it’s like, say, we are immigrants, many of us are immigrants in a particular country. And if we have to go back, we have our home country to go to.
But, if somebody is evicted from their home country itself, and, they cannot go to any other country. They just have to go somewhere in a forest and live. Sometimes, there are some adventure stories about how somebody is stranded on an island, and then they try to learn to survive on that island.
That is, it all sounds very good in adventure. But, just the situation, suddenly, at one moment, you have to just leave your home and go. And generally, when we have to accept something unfavorable, or something unpleasant, the magnitude of how unpleasant it is, depends on how pleasant our present situation is.
Like, if we are having a job that is bad, and we are fired from that job, we won’t feel that bad, in good riddance. But, Ram was the king of Ayodhya. The member of the royal family is going to become the king.
So, he had everything right. It is not just that he had a house and a job. He had a kingdom.
And suddenly, at one moment, he had to just leave everything and go to the forest to exile where he had nothing. So, just trying to process something like this, we all need to process change in life. Say, all of you are sitting and hearing.
And for you to sit and hear, a certain amount of stability and structure is required. All of you have reasonable confidence that while you are sitting, the person sitting next to you is not suddenly going to punch you on the nose. So, if you didn’t know who was sitting next to you, or if you didn’t have that much level of trust in the person sitting next to you, then maybe you will be looking half at the speaker and half at the person.
So, we all do need to process change in life. But, there is a certain amount of structure and stability that is required for us to function. And, the less the structure and stability, the more difficult it becomes for us to function.
So, as I said, if we are afraid that some person next to us might hit us, then we would function, but most of our functioning would be focused on guarding ourselves. We would not be able to do anything else. So, generally when change comes up, change consumes our attention.
Because we have to deal with it. Or even if change is not coming up, change is likely to come up. Then also, we have to deal with it and that consumes our attention.
And, the more unexpected or the more massive the change, the more difficult it is to accept it. So, now, it’s very difficult actually apart from sudden death. So, very little that can be a change like this.
At one moment, a member of the ruling family and at the next moment, just out into the forest with nothing. In fact, later on when Bharat is back and Bharat hears that Ram has been exiled to the forest, he is shocked. He said that Ram cannot even conceive doing anything wrong.
And exile is a punishment reserved for the worst of criminals. It is only one level below execution. The worst crime is punished with capital punishment.
Just one level below is exile. It means everything except your life is taken away from you. So, how does one process something like this? There are times when things change against our will and our capacity to deal with that situation that determines whether we will be able to move forward in it or not.
Some people just can’t deal with it. So, when Ram had to go through this sudden change, one moment, royal prince and next moment, a destitute exiling. It’s a huge change.
And when such change happens, most of our energy goes in processing. How can this happen? Just can’t accept it. So, the first point I am discussing is that the greater the magnitude and the unexpectedness of the change, the more difficult it is to accept it.
The more unexpected and the more massive. Then it’s that much more difficult to accept it. Say, if a student goes for an exam, it’s a maths exam, and the paper is more difficult than they expected.
It’s okay, how to deal with this? But they go for a maths exam and they get an English paper. Hey, what is this? This is not fair. So, when we go for a particular exam, we have a certain expectation.
This is what we should become in the exam. But something else entirely comes. If it’s a little more difficult paper, the student can take it.
Okay, it’s my bad luck. It’s one thing to say something is bad luck, but if a completely different paper only comes, this is unfair, this is not right. This should not be happening.
So, what happens? Life tests us in any subject at any time. So, life tests us in any subject at any time. And that’s why it can be extremely difficult.
And now, at such times, acceptance is vital. Now, we may say, okay, but I don’t want to do this. Okay, somebody may say, the visa extension doesn’t get sanctioned.
We just have to leave the country. Say, I won’t leave the country. Well, unless you want to become an undocumented immigrant, you have to leave the country.
So, of course, undocumented immigrant is the American politically correct word. Undocumented worker for a person who is staying illegally. So, anyway, if one doesn’t want to do that, then one has to accept.
And even if somebody says, I want to stay in the country illegally, still they’ll have to accept that now I have to do a lot of covert activities. I have to conceal so many things so that I can continue. So, basically, when the world around us changes, acceptance is vital.
Say, if we are not able to accept, then we keep wasting our energy futilely. Suppose somebody wanted to learn rowing and they went and took some rowing lessons and they learned rowing and then they called all their friends. When somebody learns some new skills, they want to exhibit their skills to their friends.
They call all their friends and relatives, see how nicely I’m rowing. And they had a whole dream in their mind. I’ll row gracefully and the boat will move swiftly and people will click my photos, people will click the videos and they’ll share it on social media and everybody will praise me.
And then they get into that boat and they start rowing and suddenly, out of nowhere, a monster wave comes. The monster wave hits and it hits so suddenly and so forcefully, at the next moment there is no boat and there are no oars. They have been knocked out of the boat and the oars have also been knocked out of their hands.
Now, if at that time they still, I want my photo to be clicked. And they keep rowing. Well, if they keep rowing, what will happen? What do you think will happen? They’ll drown.
They want to keep rowing but there is no boat and there are no oars. So at that time, they’ll accept, okay, these things have changed. So now, I have to paddle, I have to swim and I have to somehow get to the coast first.
And later on, I may have to do this again. So, with respect to a physically threatening situation like this, it’s easy to understand that we need to do course correction. What are you rowing now? Get out first.
Nobody would be so stupid as to keep rowing over there. But when it comes not so much to physically threatening situations but to emotionally threatening situations, then we often find it much more difficult to accept. So, sometimes things have changed so much and metaphorically speaking, we are keeping rowing.
Well, there is no boat, there are no oars. Why are you rowing? So, imagine that somebody is giving a class and somehow if I come and give a class and I speak in a language that nobody understands over here. So now, once it happened to me that I had gone for a program and they told me to speak in English.
I prepared a whole class in English. When I reached there, the organization that had called us, they just wanted because ISKCON was a big name, they wanted somebody from ISKCON to come. And there, nobody could understand English at all.
So, I had suspected something because when I got the brochure, the brochure was filled with English typos. There were many typing mistakes. So, I thought maybe they are having an English program, maybe the brochure is not written properly.
But I thought, okay, in India, grammar is often treated with a chalta hai attitude. So, I thought maybe it’s okay. But then, when I got there, I had prepared a whole class.
It was actually an interfaith meeting. I had prepared the whole class and when I got there, it was something which many of the concepts were such that I couldn’t even speak them in Hindi. I remember once I tried to speak and then after I spoke that in Hindi, I was thinking in English and speaking in Hindi.
So, I wanted to make the point that when some religions become aggressive against other religions, so, outer aggression is a distorted expression of inner insecurity. So, I spoke that in Hindi, bahaya akramakta ye antarang asrakshitta ka ek vikrut prakati karan hai. There I see all blind faces.
Then I realized, I have to change track. I cannot speak all this. So, I had a 10-minute presentation.
So, for at least 3-4 minutes, it’s like I was rowing. There was no boat at their doors. Then I realized, I have to change track.
Now I have to swim. So, for all of us, when we are put in situations that we can’t accept or that we didn’t expect, first of all. Then, unless we accept that, we can’t deal with the situation effectively.
Whatever we do, simply makes things worse. So, lack of acceptance prevents us from acting effectively. Rather, lack of acceptance pushes us to act unproductively, counterproductively.
Unproductivity is no good effect. Counterproductive is bad effect. If you keep rowing, not only you are not going to exhibit the skills, you are going to drown.
So, what happens is that we all need to learn this very vital art of acceptance. So, it is only when we accept that we can deal with things as they are. So, this was the first point I was going to make.
So, Lord Ram, how he was able to accept. We will discuss this briefly now. But the point at this stage, huge magnitude of change, he suddenly had to accept.