Dilemma of a ‘Doer’

Be it in our day to day life or once in a while, at times we wonder if we can take all the credit for the work done or is it that things happen at their own will, beyond our control. This, I call the dilemma of the ‘doer’. In Bhagawat Geeta, Lord Krishna asks us not to wish for goals or to take credit; in fact reach a state where we don’t have any feelings of ‘doer’ also. Today, a very small and regular incident happened, which points towards many vital things.

As part of my daily job I have to send a report every evening. There is a time slot within which the report should go to clients. I have myself fixed a benchmark of 4pm for my reports – thinking that it won’t be best to received daily-reports at varied times, even though within the timeslot. Today, I had finished my report about an hour before time, so I kept it in draft, in ‘unsent’ condition. I wanted to send it exactly at 16:00:00 Hrs. When the system time reached 4:00, I sent it. I felt good about it. Then I started on other works. Suddenly I suspected if the email had actually gone. I checked the Outlook and found that the email was still in the Outbox. I clicked on Refresh, but it was not going. I kept on Refreshing, then closed and opened Outlook, and by the time the email actually went off from my Inbox, the clock was 4:02. What a shocking realization. It reminded me partially of Murphy’s Law. But more than that, it reminded me that despite the fact that I did everything right from my side, it was actually not in my hand to send the email at exactly 4:00. Though I tried my best from all aspects I could control, a simple job like sending a ready email was not in my hand. Then, we can imagine about ‘bigger’ jobs!

Hindus believe that God breaks our ego at various stages, in different forms. They try to see lessons even in conditions which appear ‘let downs’. Such an attitude gives them strong sustenance qualities. We are also taught from our childhood not to flaunt our success or riches, and to give credit for our successes to other things like luck. With today’s small incident, I am forced to rethink about the power of the unrevealed and in smallness of our efforts. Dilemmas of a ‘doer’…

© Rahul