Suppose we invest a lot of effort in actualizing a particular aspiration — be it a career or a relationship or a calling — but it doesn’t succeed. Understandably, we may feel defeated, even devastated. Such emotions can be especially crippling if we can’t find any logical reason for our failure; and it seems as if life itself is saying no to us. 

Amid reversals, how can we counter the urge to give up on life itself? By understanding that life is far bigger than our present conception of life; therefore, life can flow and grow in ways that aren’t always apparent to us. Gita wisdom explains that at our core, we are indestructible beings on a multi-life journey of spiritual evolution. And what stimulates our evolution can vary drastically from both what seems to be a ‘yes’ from life, which is usually based on what we think is enjoyable or even beneficial; and what seems to be a ‘no’ from life, which is usually based on what we think is distressing or harmful. Why the drastic variation? Because our perceptions of ‘yes’ and ‘no’ arise from our present incomplete life-conceptions. Pointing to the power of an expanded life-conception, the Bhagavad-gita (05.20) states that the spiritually anchored remain unswayed by both pleasures and troubles.

When we equip ourselves with this spiritual wisdom, we see a reversal not as a ‘no’ to life, but as a ‘no’ to a particular door of life. With this expanded vision of life, we stop exerting and exhausting our intelligence in figuring out why that door closed — especially when such an exercise takes us nowhere except to frustration. Instead, we redirect our intelligence to see other doors through which we can move on with our life. Once we start looking beyond the one door that has shut, we will discover that another has opened for us — or might be openable if we just knock or nudge or push. 

By thus staying purposeful and persistent, we can go through and grow through life’s roughest reversals.  

One-sentence summary: 

A ‘no’ to a particular door in life is not a ‘no’ to life — see beyond the closed door to other doors that have opened or are openable. 

Think it over: 

  • When may negative emotions cripple us?
  • How does Gita wisdom change our conception of life?
  • How can this changed life-conception help us face reversals?

***

05.20: A person who neither rejoices upon achieving something pleasant nor laments upon obtaining something unpleasant, who is self-intelligent, who is unbewildered, and who knows the science of God is already situated in transcendence.

When life seems to say ‘no’ to us

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