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Sheer Luck or Hard Work

Some people are strong believers and advocates of destiny while others insist on karmic values and have faith that one can achieve any success or goal in life through sheer commitment and hard work.

This reminds me of a story from my childhood narrated by an elderly man who himself was a fatalist. As per narration, two friends during a long sojourn to hinterland happened to reach an old deserted castle nearing the dusk on a day. As the forward journey was considered not safe during the night and due to the day long travel they were tired and needed much deserved rest too, they decided to break their journey and spend night in the old castle.

One of them was a firm believer of fate and the other attached a lot of importance to karmic action. Commensurate with their belief, one was quite lazy and idle while the other preferred prompt action and work most of the time. As it was already dark, the first one immediately retired in the corner of a room and decided to take rest. The other one could not lie idle, felt hunger and thought he will take chance to check in the castle in a hope to find some eatables stored somewhere.

While exploring in the dark, he came across some object on the floor and staggered just short of falling and getting hurt. Out of sheer curiosity, he checked only to find a sack full of certain stuff. He returned back with the sack and settled in the centre of the same room. Due to darkness, he could not see the stuff but with the soft sense of touch he concluded that the sack contains sweet peas and some pebbles. So every time he would pick up sweet pea to eat, he mockingly threw supposedly a pebble towards his lazy friend. The latter, in turn, religiously picked it up and retained it in his belongings.

In the morning, the sunlight revealed that the pebbles were actually diamonds. So while one friend was merely able to satisfy his carnal desire of hunger with great effort, the other had hit a jackpot of costly diamonds which the former considered useless stones in the darkness of night. Obviously, the morale of story is that people should have faith in fate or destiny rather than karma.

This is what many people subscribe to in life and perhaps in this complex world of living, in some cases this may come true also. But let us remember that we live in a physical world largely in the realm of cause and effect and vice versa. Personally I feel there is no substitute of hard work. One can find numerous instances of the hard work paying and one can achieve any success or goal in life through commitment, a well thought of strategy and hard work

This, however, is a matter of personal choice of a person whether he (or she) opts for hard work or simply rely on fate to achieve objective and goals in life.

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