This was the millionth time I was seeing this video in past few days, by now I could spell every word before Sylvester Stallone and I did when the video started.
‘Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. It’s very mean and nasty place and I don’t care how tough you are. It will beat you to your knees and keep you permanently there if you let it be. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life..’
I paused it there.
I hated what comes after this; all crap.
Past few months have been hard on me. It’s not that life had been easy on me since childhood but I managed. With family around me, friends just few minutes away, it never seem that I was struggling in life.
For the first time I had come this far from my family and friends to another city and that too for sake of a job I didn’t want to do. Money sometimes makes a slave out of you and make you do all sorts of things.
I came into this new city a couple of years ago and I loved it. I had to love it as fortunately my girl-friend also had got job in same city.
It was all sunshine (to hell with Sylvester!!). We would roam around, make love, talk endlessly until she dropped a bomb that she wants to move on. Why?
Because she had got better offer from another company in another city and she won’t be able to handle a long distance relationship.
I tried to discuss with her but she wasn’t up for that. She had already decided what she wanted to do and she wasn’t seeing any future with me. She left exactly after a month she had told me about her plans.
I couldn’t take that. She was the only one I had in that city. No friends, no relatives, no family. I was all alone by myself.
Before I could handle what was happening with my emotional side, my physical side gave me another reason to worry about. I had few ulcers in my stomach and that restricted the only luxury I had in past few days, the food.
I started having plain boiled food as instructed by my doctor as any salt or spicy item would create more acidity in my stomach and I would be literally wincing with pain.
And as if this wasn’t enough, I picked up a fight with my boss.
In a nutshell, nothing seems to be working in my life. What do most people do in such situation when there is negativity all around? I did the same thing.
I started feeling depressed. I would stay at home almost all the time and would go out only for my job. At home also, I would keep surfing the net endlessly, watching mindless videos.
Then one day I came across a motivational video.
I started watching that and I felt somewhat better so in next few weeks I watched hundreds of those videos. I started feeling much better.
There was only one problem with them. Till the time I watched those videos, I was pumped up but few moments later, I was again living and thinking same shit.
After few weeks, that thing was also gone and I was becoming hopeless day by day. I was alone and jobless at home, my mind would wander in various directions and mostly those directions would end up with some negativity only.
I am a firm believer in Karma and with each passing day with no significant improvement in my situation, I started feeling down thinking that everything happening with me is the result of my bad karma. I am a bad person that’s why all those things are happening with me.
The burden of this one thought was way more than all the previous negative thoughts I had.
I was piled under those thoughts only when I opened that video of Sylvester Stallone thinking that it might soothe me but it didn’t.
What to do? I was getting restless.
‘Let’s go out’-A voice inside me suggested.
As if I was hypnotized by it, I dressed up and for the first time in months, stepped out for a walk.
It was a Sunday morning so not much of traffic on the roads. Unknowingly, my feet led me to the nearby temple where I had not gone for, may be years together. I myself was surprised to see me there. May be god was too surprised to see me there, that’s why no attention was paid to how I was feeling or how I could come out of the mess I was in. I came out of the temple in same situation I had got in, helpless, broken and frustrated with myself.
After coming out, I went to a roadside eatery to have some snacks. While I sat on the seat placed outside the shop to have a sip of tea with that grilled sandwich, one girl approached me.
She must be 7–8 years old. Her hair and face was full of dust so was her yellow dress which had become brown by then. She smiled at me and asked for something to eat when I was just about to have first bite of that sandwich. I could see helplessness in her eyes but it was much bigger than mine.
Again as if under some hypnotism, I placed that plate of sandwich on her hands and then I witnessed a magic. Her whole body started shivering. For a moment I panicked when I saw tears rolling down from her eyes but before I could react; she thanked me, took her plate and crossed the door to be with her folks sitting across the road.
I didn’t feel like taking another sandwich. I just finished my tea and proceeded for my home. But I had started feeling little different inside. May be something was changing.
As I took few steps on my way, a little voice again spoke inside me and asked me to turn back and I turned.
And when I turned, I saw one of the most beautiful scenes of my life.
I saw that girl, covered with dust all over her body, sitting with that sandwich in her hands and sharing it with her siblings. As if some force was working to create the scene, so next that girl raised her hand and looked at me as if she was following me and then she passed on me the biggest smile I had ever seen.
It was from ear to ear, filled with happiness, love and gratitude.
In that moment, I could feel some big burden lifted from my soul. I felt liberated.
I turned towards my home after waving her bye but I was so lost in her that I forgot that I was crying. I was so lost in the moment that I noticed that after few people passing by looked at me strangely.
I sat down at the corner of the road, wiped my tears and said to myself-‘you’re not that bad a man bro’
I looked at the surroundings; suddenly everything looked different and moving. It was all sunshine again. I closed my eyes and the thing which came to me was the part of Sylvester Stallone’s motivational video which I thought was crap few moments ago:
‘But it ain’t about how hard you hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward; how much you can take and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done! Now if you know what you’re worth, then go out and get what you’re worth, but you gotta be willing to take the hits, and not pointing fingers saying you ain’t where you wanna be because of him, or her, or anybody. Cowards do that and that ain’t you. You’re better than that!.’
That day for an outsider, I had helped that Girl by providing that meal to her but only I knew, it was other way around as she had fed my soul with new sunshine that day.