What Do We Need?

All my articles have something hidden in them. All you have to do, is read between the lines.
The purpose of this article, is to understand how it feels when a person finds that nothing is as it seems. This statement itself has a few deeper questions embedded in it, like, what is true happiness and how do we know which path to take when the time comes, for us to choose?

I have discovered that most often we find the answers to our questions within us. The only way to find these answers is by self-realization. So in this self-induced thought process, as we progress, we find the answers to the questions which we never knew we had, within us.
So I am going to imagine scenarios -three, to be precise – one of an editor, another of a lifeguard and the last, of an orphan. So let me proceed to the first scenario-
There is a man. He has nothing unique in him. But he finds that writing gives him immense pleasure and he pursues his goal of becoming an editor. He becomes a successful editor in the Times NY office. All he remembers of the day he took up office, are faces filled with smiles and encouraging words, saying that help would always be there when he needed it.
He thought of all his colleagues as his close friends and treated them all very affectionately. Not once when he was in office, had anyone heard him raise his voice or fire anyone. He always helped those who were yet to unveil their potential, discover the key to unlock it. For a while he led a happy life.
Then, one day, another editor from another newspaper company came by to offer some “friendly advice”. Once seated, the man started to explain about how people were plotting against the editor and about how he should deal with the politics. The editor had never heard anything like this. Then, the man started naming people in the Times office who were plotting against the editor. Alarmed, the editor held a meeting, where he found that none of his employees were with his decisions. He yearned for some understanding and sympathy, and thus went to a few of his “trusted” friends. On seeking help for them, he found that none of them were in favour of his actions as an editor.
The editor wasn’t frustrated. He wasn’t disappointed. He just felt full of voidness. He was feeling empty and seeking some compassion, he called up his mother. While conversing with her, he found out, that she, too, was against him becoming editor. His image of smiling faces was broken down.

That night he died of internal bleeding due to stress.
Why does this happen??? He was a victim of continual suffering. What should he have done? He should have endured. He should have continued to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive – Martin Luther King Junior. He should have taken a leap of faith to have his hopes rewarded.
So now, I’ll move on to the next scenario-
The job of a lifeguard, is one that involves a lot of taxing and diverse choices. This scenario is related to that. I was influenced to choose this kind of a scenario because of the movie, “The Guardian.”
I imagine a lifeguard who loves his work. He handles a very large beach, and has a hectic schedule, working 8 hours a day. In a week, at least three lives are saved thanks to the timely coming of that lifeguard. This week, he saves 10 people from drowning. Coast control acknowledges his feat by awarding him a week off with pay.

He goes with his family, to a secluded part of the beach to have a picnic. Only his and another family are present there. They enjoyed themselves but disaster took them by surprise as a wave, much bigger than the others, hit them and two people – a child from the other family and the lifeguard’s mother were sucked into the grasps of the ocean. The lifeguard finds he has time to rescue only one of them. Since his mother was family, he chooses her. The child is lost, and presumed dead.
When the lifeguard goes home, supposedly unhurt, he finds that he is unable to perform the smallest of jobs with efficiency. Questions plague him asking him whether he should have saved the child. At that time, he receives a call from his mother and instead of the expected thank you he gets blasted at, for choosing her and letting the child die. The lifeguard can’t take it. He wishes he too had drowned. The water had taken away, equal to what it had given him all this while.
In this scenario, the lifeguard can’t do anything. What he should have done is simple. But not one easy to digest. He could have saved any one of them but the person he did save and the family of the person he did save will most likely curse him forever, but he must endure. He will forever have the guilt in his heart, asking him whether he is God to choose whose life to spare and whose to take? But he must go on. He must take a leap of faith to have his faith rewarded. But that still leaves us with one question – What is true happiness?

This last scenario tries to answer this question, and it is inspired by Paulo Coelho’s Witch of Portobello-
Winning the lottery or getting a promotion in office is not true happiness. It is a turn of fate, which may give us temporary satisfaction. What it is will be understood in due course of time.
This scenario is about an orphaned girl, but one who has foster parents who treat her and love her like their own child. She loves them too. She hoes through many obstacles in life and she becomes a successful real estate business person. But all the while, she feels as though there is something empty empty inside of her. She doesn’t know what the purpose of her being her, is. What special job does she have to finish, what unique task does she have to accomplish, to feel that her life is justified? She describes her life as a book in which the lines are her adventures, and that when she writes these lines she is focused but during the empty spaces she is, for a moment, lost. Moreover, she knows that without the empty spaces there is no meaning to this book, of her life. Thus, she seeks to find her real mother to find out how to fill this gap. Hereafter, she goes to every known person for help and finally traces her blood-mother.
But, at the sight of her mother, she realizes that this woman abandoned her when she was in need. She had left her for dead. The mother is filled with love, regret and fear. Love, at seeing her daughter again, regret, for what she had sacrificed by leaving her, and fear, that her daughter may not love her anymore. During the duration of the daughter’s stay, she never spoke to her mother. Only when the time came for her to leave did something, something unexplainable, come over her, and she broke down on her mother’s shoulder, crying. This is true love. This situation is unexplainable, but this is the truest of all love – the basis for all affection and care in this world.

Our questions have been answered and now we have something deeper to ponder over and to uncover more answers to different questions.