16th-century Europe saw the rise of Protestant Reformation as a challenge to the authority and practices of the Roman Catholic Church. In Calvinist theology, God has already determined who will be saved. Therefore, people cannot earn salvation through good deeds. Protestants refused this belief, challenged it and put forth an idea of treating work as worship.
When work started being treated as worship, material success started becoming the parameter of being the chosen one. The uncertainty about one’s spiritual status encouraged some believers to seek reassurance through disciplined conduct and success in their calling. Work no longer a means to earn bread but became a calling, a vocation duly prescribed by God. Performing one’s occupation diligently became a form of religious responsibility. While the idea of being a chosen one had existed even before the beginning of Protestantism, the connection of ‘chosen one’ to ‘material success’ was a new one.
Hinduism talks about ‘swadharma’ – the idea of living and acting according to your own dharma, your responsibilities, nature and capacities. Bhagavad Gita mentions that it is better to follow your own dharma imperfectly than to follow someone else’s dharma perfectly. While the original idea also concerns prescribed social and religious duties, today it gets interpreted as following your personal passion or career choice, which is but one part of swadharma.
One’s swadharma can be as simple as being a sweeper or as complex as being the VP of a high-tech firm. One’s swadharma can range from being a teacher in a local school to being President of world’s most powerful nation. One’s swadharma could be a full-time mother and raise the next generation, being a local artisan and create terracotta toys, so on and so forth.
Many spiritual teachings today teach us that if our lives have been hard and we don’t get things easy as compared to others, we are the ‘chosen ones’. If there are chosen ones, by default there are people who are then not the ‘chosen ones’. So people who have it easy seem to be less loved by God, are not chosen by God or somehow have lives that are deemed lesser than ‘chosen ones’. Yes we have been there and it really pampers our ego when we have a full-time God who loves us more than He loves others. It is a balm to our suffering and gives us a storyline by virtue of which we can make some sense of our harsh world. The question now remains- Did every life that had it tough turn out to have a seemingly grandiose destiny and a larger range of impact as compared to others? No right.
There have been countless individuals who saw really rough patches for really long times only to one day bid goodbye to this planet.
Does this mean they were not the ‘chosen ones’?
Does this make their lives less worthy?
Does this make their lives smaller?
Somehow the concept of ‘chosen one’ has offered us refuge and no it is not bad. We are humans and somehow we have to live and sustain in our tough journeys. This might mean taking refuge of being the ‘chosen one’ to make some sense of our worlds.
Why?
Because stories calm our nervous systems and it is the doorway of how we can make our journeys easy on this planet.
No. I am not here to kill the Santa Claus you and me so fondly believed in. Rather I am offering you another perspective and giving you a due space to examine it as and when you feel okay to examine it. As and when you can hold space for it.
Why does life only and only has to make sense and look beautiful if it is full of sunshine and rainbows?
It is your soul’s journey. You have chosen it for your own spiritual growth. If your journey has major rough patches in it to clear out karma, why does this make your life smaller? What is it about pain and distress that causes us to avoid seeing it in the eye and sit with it, rather than bypass it? Why do we need a happy Santa Claus at our disposal to make our Christmas season more merrier? Can you make Santa sit with you in your not so put-together days and still call it a Christmas well spent?
The thing is one word- Shame.
Shame of being a failure in life, shame of being seen as failure by others in life, shame of not having made it to the top, shame of people zoning out on you when life felt blue.
But why does we have to worship and thank God only when we gives us sunshine. What if the rains are also a lovely way for God to have something to say? Yes I know it is tough to sit in the pain, but only and only until we don’t allow pain to be teacher and for it to be a portal. If we allow it to flow through, it won’t really feel blue and have a lot to teach too. It will leave you changed and offer you a new range. Have faith
Sikhism in its scriptures has a saying which goes on to mean- “Many endure constant suffering. Even these are Your gifts, O Great Giver”. No this is not a call for you to endure suffering and stay in abuse by justifying it as a gift from God. That is not the point here. The point is that sufferings many a times come to mould us, forge us to be the version of ourselves that is meant to enter new timelines. The point is not that God wants His children to endure suffering. The point is that sometimes karmic clearing is needed. At times wounding enable us to shine light for others who are enduring the same pain. The point is not that we can not take refuge in being the ‘chosen one’. The point is that we don’t really have to judge people as being the chosen ones only and only if they have material success at their feet and riches of the world as their crowns.
We can choose to build societies where grief is seen just for what it is- energy in motion- an emotion- As vital and as simple as joy, anger or any other emotion.
Just energy in motion. Your joy doesn’t make you ‘less chosen’ and my suffering doesn’t have to make me ‘the chosen’
For if there is God who so fondly created us all, how can there be a ‘chosen one’ at all?
Are not being available to grace and being loved by God two different ideas?
I sit still with the question and just let it linger. Let the path ahead tell.
It is okay to say- No, I don’t fully know.
As I close, I am reminded of image of Jesus searching for one lost sheep in His huge flock.
Why?
To Him, every sheep mattered
He is the Shepherd and every sheep is His sheep- The lost ones just need more help to be found out, but every single sheep is His sheep.
No I am not the interpreter of religion but I have walked some paths and seen events that caused me to question as to why does only and only pain need to become your way to be the ‘chosen one’? I sit with the question and may be shall forever do. I don’t know. Do you?
Love and light
Yasmin
