Sanjeev Jha
Thought Miner… Intellect Inspirer …
Choice Is A Choice…We Are Our Choices
I was meeting a very close friend after long long time. Almost a lil over a decade. Our priorities and pursuits had kept us busy. While we did keep a track of our lives and spoke occasionally, we hadn’t met for long.
Seated at a nondescript joint aptly named Madhushala at Hyderabad, we updated each other about our lives. In the last decade, my buddy had gone through hell and experienced heaven later 😊 He lost his house that he had built with so much love, landed on streets, become bankrupt, escaped death from a devastating accident, subsequently landed a great job with hopeless boss, and so many other travesties of life. He had overcome all this, kept upgrading himself, doing his job with elan & passion, got new certifications and subsequently cracked a great interview and now become a Global HR Head with a reputed organization that finally decoded his intrinsic talent and capabilities. In the last few years, he has achieved far more than what he lost and is now a very successfully happy person.
I asked him how he cracked the code. How did he overcome so many tragedies, just any one of which could break any individual. What he said just blew me away. It was the solution that we all perhaps always have known but never exercised. He told me he chose positivity & happiness over negativity and self-pitying in sorrow. He added that there is no competition in the first category of positivity & happiness and that is where he chose to be. The second category of negativity, self-pity, complaints, cribbing & sobbing in sorrows is overcrowded and highly competitive.
Wowww…. So damn true… This just blasted a flashing light of enlightenment in my mind. Madhushala just had become my BodhGaya…. In a moment I will come to the first category, let me speak about the second one first…. As rightly analyzed… there is a huge population out here .. each fighting to gain supremacy on how much they are suffering over others, how life has dealt the worst cards to them, how everything that can go wrong has gone wrong with them, how the almighty seemed to have forsaken them… a highly overcrowded group with extreme levels of healthy competition. No, I am not saying that they are wrong… each one in his best knowledge must certainly be suffering and be pained with the calamities & misfortunes that fate had dealt out in their lives. As soon as you become a part of this crowd… I have a life membership here that I am about to renounce… you get complimentary mental shades that blind you towards any hint of happiness, blessing, gratitude in your life and feeds your senses with how nobody is suffering better than you.
The first category of people is usually like the empty movie halls of a flop movie… hardly any crowd. No competition at all… This is the place where no self-pity… no wallowing in sorrows always… no looking in rear view mirrors and speeding ahead in life is allowed… here you tend to get filters that keep away the worst in your life and highlight the best that is there… the possibilities, the potential, choices that can lead to pursuits of passion & purpose, gratitude to existence for each day of breathing… appreciation of the small mercies of life that millions might find as luxury… chasing the brightness of life and choosing to be happy by making choices that lead to happiness. There is no competition here at all.
Circumstances influence choices… choices influence decisions … decisions influence outcomes & outcomes lead to circumstances… It’s a circle. We are products of our choices… so were our ancestors and so will be our progeny. How we react to circumstances again is a choice. And from this choice, decisions are born which lead to pre-determined outcomes. If Krishna said that we have rights to only our karma and not the fruits thereof, he did not discount the outcomes of karma. What he meant was that the moment you make a choice and act upon it, usually the outcome is pre-determined. Squeezing lemon juice on a blue litmus paper can be a choice… and of course the outcome of that karma may not be in your hand as the choice of karma you made has already a defined outcome as its fruit.
Had we given greater efforts and strived harder our scores in all our exams might have been better and led to more brighter prospects. Had we chased our passion with single minded obsession, we might have perhaps achieved what must have given us existential joys. Every choice we made in whatever way we did, gave its appropriate result. Here is Sanjeev Baba’s First Law of Existence: Every Seed of Choice Has a Predetermined Output in its embryo. The moment you germinate the seed with action, by exercising the choice, you have given life to the fruit of your choice …
Making a right choice for yourself is a choice. Choice is a choice. We are Our Choices. Choose carefully.
I have chosen to relocate to the first group by renouncing my life membership & leadership position that I had in the second one 😊
Charaiveti… Charaiveti
Sanjeev Jha 
Nicely quoted sir
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