Want One, Get Another

No matter how firm your plans for life, believe me, life will never follow your blueprint. Life follows its own design.

As a child, perhaps you dreamed of being an artist, or scaling Mount Everest. Sometimes you'd strum a guitar late into the night, coax melodies from a flute. You imagined so many things!

You dreamed of making a home for life with the person of your dreams. Yet you'll find that in fate's script, that person will happily make a home with someone else, and you too will contentedly build a life with another. Both of you will be quite well. You'll miss that beloved person, yes, but life won't turn out badly. People can miss someone deeply while still finding happiness with another.

Wanting to be a high-ranking government official, you might instead become a major corporate leader.
You who once strummed guitars all day, singing breathless songs, might one day become the busiest of businesspeople, without even a moment to catch your breath.

You who painted life in vivid colors across walls might, for lack of employment, forget the very hue of your own existence. You who dreamed of becoming a fashion designer might never get the chance to design your own destiny. Living requires some foundation. With any foundation at all, people manage to survive.

Whatever plans you make, believe me, life will never follow your formula—don't worry so much about it; it doesn't for anyone.

Perhaps you toiled for years, waiting to build a house where you'd keep your parents. Perhaps your parents will leave this world before seeing the house, or perhaps you'll depart before the house is built. Who can say when anyone will go!
They set fire to the train; all three members of that small family burned to death. That person whose lifeless body was trapped in the train window surely had dreams too. The one who had to die alongside his wife and child surely wasn't trying to escape the sacred duty of dreaming! Yet he had to escape anyway! See fate's cruel jest... the home was lost, the homemaker too. Does God build homes for the inhuman, while devils destroy homes of humans? Seeking explanations for such things, I simply cannot stay sane. That a home survives in the end—this is the most beautiful sight in the world. The only tragedy of wanting to live as a human: ultimately, you must keep faith in humans.

You wanted to be a cricketer, footballer, or businessman. Perhaps life will make you a busy professional with a rigid 12-15 hour daily schedule.

You who dreamed of roaming the world like a kite might one day find yourself shuttling between office and home so relentlessly that you won't even have time to visit the playground next door. Days will pass just like that; you won't even notice in the rush!

Believe me, this is how it happens. What we want never comes to pass. Either something far greater happens, or not even a trace of it materializes. Fire in the house, fire outside... tell me, do people still want to keep living then! Yet people do live; living is what makes humans human.

Life is really like a game of snakes and ladders. Who will climb the ladder when, who will fall into a snake's mouth and tumble from the highest point to rock bottom—there's no telling. Still life goes on, just as that river rushes forward, having lost its way.

What will be, will be! Whatever you can become, become that—become it well. That's all your work. What's the use of overthinking! If thinking could make things happen, then people wouldn't have so much sorrow!