There is this chain mail (or email forward, to give it an euphematic name) doing the rounds:
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A loving couple was aboard a bus taking a tortuous mountain road. They got down mid-way, and the bus moved on. Soon, a big boulder collapsed on the bus, completely crushing it and all the passengers. On seeing this, the couple remarked: “We wish we were on the bus.”
Come again?
Their logic was, had they been on the bus, and not gotten down earlier, the bus would have been spared of the small delay and the boulder would have come crashing down after the bus had cleared the road.
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So, I ask, is that really possible? What if the boulder was meant to crash on that very bus, if there is some such thing?
Of course the point of the forward is to lighten the think positive attitude, and that one should always think of ways one can help others, but come on…
What if the couple had not gotten down, and there would have been no delay, and the bus would have cleared the road, and the boulder would have crashed on the family in a mini van? The couple should be thankful that they got down due to which the mini van which was behind the bus also got delayed, and as a consquence the family was saved… Or if the boulder had rolled over behind the bus, and the squashed it there after? Or if the boulder got an early start? Maybe someone else got down instead of them.
All of us like to think of what it could have been, especially so, because we cannot live that alternate version of reality. And then we talk of controlling our destiny, or lining up stuff so that it appears that we control destiny. Do we really? Or is there no such thing?
Inside all of us, lies an interpreter or sorts, which can make us feel good, changing over from one lanugage to other, which ever sounds the best at that point of time. Nice, isn’t it?