Embrace the Randomness

Embrace the Randomness !!!

Karoly Takacs, a Hungarian soldier, until 1938 had won all the National Championships and became the best pistol shooter of the country. He had aspired to make his shooting hand the best around the world. Karoly had started practicing for the upcoming 1940’s Olympic,aiming for a gold medal in pistol shooting. Unfortunately, during an army training, he met with an accident, and had lost his shooting arm. His dreams blurred for a while. Karoly had two options, either to lie down crying and finding out ways to run away from this unplanned failure, or to stick to his goals. No sooner did he accept the fact of losing his best arm, he started practicing with his “only arm”. Little did he know that his life had more to tackle, 1940’s Olympics were cancelled. So did the 1944’s Olympics. As he grew up, it was becoming difficult to compete with the new participants, due to his growing age. Finally, he won a gold medal in 1948 and then in 1952. He became the World’s first shooter to win 2 gold medals, owing to the fact that he was competing with his “only arm”. 

Was Karoly planned for this misfortune, this unplanned incident? Had he ever dreamt of this worst situation which would take him miles away from his dreams? Who should he blame? If Karoly would have wasted his time to rationalize this mishap, he wouldn’t be able to shift his focus for the next event. Losers have a list of reasons for them not being able to do a thing or two. On the contrary, the winners have only one reason to achieve that goal. Everyone has a master plan for their steps to success. But not everything happens as you have planned it.  It may happen that you would need to just change your plan, discard your plan, or sometimes not plan at all! 

“Someday everything would make perfect sense,'' is what we say to achieve peace with the situation we today are facing. “Just go with the flow” is what we make ourselves run along with the random changes in our lives. Challenges, struggles, failures, death, breakups, financial losses, hard to accept, isn’t it?. Sometimes it's even harder to blame someone else for the situation. Our conscious mind makes a tough struggle to “rationalize” everything that happens in life, in spite of how unpredictable and volatile life is.

One of the nice thoughts I came across,

“Rationalization is the device, that ego uses to keep up its perception of the world and all the identities and the judging patterns it has manufactured for us.”

It's hard to accept the failure, to accept that we are poor at a thing, to make ourselves understand that we can find another way out. “Rationalizing” is what we eventually do when we try to explain all the unexpected that happens to us.

“The exam was difficult, and lengthy”

“The situations were not appropriate for me to study”

“This job is not suitable for me”

“Other players have practiced for long”

We often accept the "positive randomness" without thinking too much. One line, “Well, I deserved it!” is enough for the explanation. But for a negative randomness, our ego needs a perfect story to live with all the randomness that it comes across. A story worth explaining to people(and ourselves) on behalf of our failure. This may sometimes be worth,  just to boost up your lost confidence. But, where the actual strength lies is in “acceptance”. 

       When I am sad, I melt in sadness. When I fail, I plan for the next steps to take. When I feel uncomfortable, I speak it out with someone who understands it. When I am down, I cry.  When I am happy, I dance. I embrace the randomness, and let my emotions flow. Its OK to not have a plan. Its OK to not just chase something and live in the present. Its OK to eat what falls in your plate. Its OK to break your knees when you fall. Its OK to lose a race. Its OK to just go with the flow. What builds is embracing the illogical, unexpected randomness of life.

When I comprehend the randomness, I believe that within me there is a small place with no words, no explanations. Deep down in my soul, a silent space where I embrace the beautiful relative entropy of the universe, with no reasoning for what Karma makes me do. 

I give away my efforts to rationalize my failure. I stop framing reasons to satisfy my ego, something to say to the public. Maybe this randomness would bring something really amazing for you. I embrace the “randomness”, do you?

-Miss. Urvi U. Mandge