Our existence matters for much bigger reasons than we can ever imagine
While listening to a speech this morning, I heard a really happy story. 😃 I want to share this story because, it is the simplest but most powerful story I heard in months. And it just goes to say how much we underestimate our existence and how we have no idea about our ripple effect on others.
One guy who was struggling with acute depression for many years was finally contemplating suicide. He had no reason to live, no one to love (so it seemed), no friends who seemed to understand what he was going through and everyday day felt like a drag through heavy voidness and emptiness. He decided an overdose of pills was going to be his preferred choice of moving on and away from his painful life and that “today” was the day.
On that day, (thank god) he decided to go out for a walk. 🙂 At a crossing, he stopped to let a moving car pass by. The lady in the moving car stopped, looked right into his eyes, gave him a full broad smile and politely gestured with her hands that he could cross the road first. 🙂 Her direct eye contact, smile and polite gesture was ALL FOR HIM AT THAT MOMENT. According to him, in his words, “It had such a profound effect on me that I decided I was not going to take my life. I went straight home and could not forget how she looked into my eyes and smiled. I decided living was any day better than dying if I am surrounded by the right people. On that day, I sorted out to support groups and have had immense changes in my outlook towards life.”
That woman in the car will never ever come to know that she saved his life. We will never come to know who she is. Maybe, it was actually one of you, who’s reading this now. 🙂
We will never come to know how many lives we have saved. We all live an unconscious life in some way or the other. We hurt ourselves and others (especially our close ones) through words and actions we don’t even mean or intend. But even in our unconscious way of life, we still have the power to create the minutest gesture to change another person’s life and really, that is such a great feeling! 🙂
The woman who changed that guy’s decision to die, for all you know has bigger issues than him. Maybe she lost her job, maybe she has someone ill at home, who knows! We’ll never know. But what we can accept through this story is that, “Some random action which means nothing to us is what means everything to someone else.”
We get a different perspective when we raise ourselves to a different level.
Every time You and I feel we are not good enough, we should really ponder over how our existence has saved a life, changed someone’s mood and helped someone WITHOUT US EVEN KNOWING ABOUT IT. There is no doubt we have. An invisible, miraculous force that we are all unaware of makes it all happen through us. It is very humbling to know that the force chooses us every single day to create a massive changes in others’ life while we go about criticizing ourselves. 🙂🙏
Isn’t that awesome and funny at the same time!
Being Stable Inside everyday is not just about having mindful practices. It is also be about “having a perspective” that changes our outlook through the simplest of gestures and acts of kindness and nurturing ourselves consciously through that.
Please share if you found this story inspiring.
