Q: We keep hearing that everything that comes our way – be it people, a phone call or anything, has a purpose for us, a place in our journey. Are these things always for our good?

Yeah I think of it like this – are you zooming in or zooming out when looking at the ‘picture’ of life. When you zoom out completely – look at all of life in totality, across all time and all space, nothing matters. Everything is perfect exactly as it is, in complete balance.

The more you zoom in, the more things change. Spiritual growth is the journey of learning to zoom out more. Your capacity for maximum zooming out is your.. let’s say.. spiritual quotient. If you’re living life very zoomed in, your vision is very narrow and you can end up suffering a lot. However, you cannot live ‘zoomed out’. Because if you really zoom out, it doesn’t matter if there is no salt in your food. It doesn’t matter if you go to work in your pyjamas. It doesn’t matter if you lose your job, get divorced, lose a loved one, etc. Even if we are stuck in 50 cycles of repeating the same painful story, it’s all fine in the larger picture. But when we zoom in, there is always a possibility to improve and learn faster.

Zooming out, we are learning, we are experiencing. Zooming in, we want to make things as comfortable as we can. It is between these two that the balance lies. This is why I love the proverb ‘Grant us the courage to change what we can, the serenity to accept what we can’t, and the wisdom to tell the difference’.