2008-11-22
Today I went to a party at my dad’s office. There I met this wonderful person who is 57 years old now.
Let me tell something that I found about him:
He’s 57 years old now and married. His wife still works abroad as a house maid and his all sisters are abroad in Australia.
Even though he’s married since a long time ago, he was not blessed with children. His father has already passed away and his mom is healthy but she lives in Australia with his sisters.
His sisters have tried many times to take him to Australia but at all those times authorities had rejected him due to his age.
Once he was even rejected to visit his sisters EVEN for a short period!
From this smal job he gets a very small salary about 100 US $ and his sisters sends him 200 Australian dollars once a month by which he manages to pay his bills and get other needs.
Even though he’s getting a very low salary, he bears a great deal fo responsibilities. Once, as he explained me, he had to go and buy things for few Indians who were hired to assemble a automatic plant.
When he was going to attend that, the waste removal truck has appeared which is also his responsibility. So he has waited for that to finish before go for the other work. But a manager has told him to go and get things while the truck was doin its job.
While he was away, the truck have accidently dumped a large amount of trash on a pipe which then made a huge leak in the glue storage tank making a loss of 40,000 Sri Lankan Rupees (Like 400 US$). Since the manager did not accept he instructed my friend to go, my friend had to pay the loss! 400 US $ may be not a huge some for you but for his salary this was huge.
And I forgot to mention that he once have also had a heart attack….!
So ….
When he was talking like this, you may think that he was a poor guy with a very unhappy life, just the way I thought.
But for my surprice, he was the most happy guy there and there was a genuine smile in his face all the time and it was very pleasent to talk with him.
The best thing is….
He told me that he beleives a lot in God and told me that he has a secret prayer which keeps him so happy and makes lord give him a very successful life and told me that since we are friends, he’d send that prayer to me through my father.
This reminded me a lesson on PARADIGMS….
It’s all about the way we see things that keeps us and people around us happy. He did not complain about those countless problems he had. He told those as challenges that he has faced and he told those things to me in a way as giving a lecture to a younger person.
He did not say God let him get an heart attack, He said, God saved me from that heart attack while many people die from their first heart attack…!
He did not worry because he had to pay a large sum of money for another guys fault eventhough he was upset for that guy’s dishonest behaviour. He was happy because his prayers had been answered and God has tought a lesson to the management though a huge loss on the company (in millions of rupees) due to another irresponsible decision work of the same manager.
What I learnt…
We should not see the worst side of anything that happens to us. Doing that does not solve that problem but only puts us to a even worse level.
We should change our lenses and try through different angles and I do think that we certainly can win the main objective of our life…
which is … HAPPINESS!!!
Cassian Menol Razeek
I Learnt Today 