“Life is just one damn thing after another.”
– Anonymous

The damn things could come to you, steady and slow like trickles from a leaky tap that irritate you for a while before you hurriedly get into the act and fix them. Or they could come like whirling, gushing torrents of a river and overwhelm you completely.

They could be as benign as a viral fever that earns you rest and sympathy from your dear ones for a few days or as dreadful as coronavirus infection that has, alas, taken so many lives! If you manage to survive, you need to move heaven and earth to prevent a recurrence – you have to build embankments or develop vaccines requiring painstaking efforts for years.

You cannot simply swat them like a fly nor can you save yourself the troubles  completely even if you were to settle down in the heights of the divine Himalayas and live the life of a hermit away from the din and bustle of daily struggles down in the plains. You can only pray that they are within your manageable limits.

The Earth supports life. But water and atmosphere that form the biosphere and have made such abundance of life possible on the planet can also stir themselves into violent storms, cyclones, cloudbursts and many other calamities, causing great miseries for all beings. Gravity that keeps us on the ground can also pull us from the top and can injure and even kill us.

The laws of universe do not change to suit our safety and well-being. We also share our space with many invisible organisms such as virus and bacteria which can get into our bodies and cause havoc to our health and immune system. Then as if these were not enough, human beings damage each other either by design or by accident.

The reasons for damn things are endless and this article is an attempt to capture only a few aspects of them in definite form.

Thankfully, you can prevent some of them by being careful and cautious. In everyday life, a lot of time is spent in keeping things in order so that accidents do not occur. A glass can fall because of gravity and break; therefore, keep it safe so that it does fall.

And if we look at the history of evolution of man, most significant preventive actions have already been taken by our predecessors. Humans have moved away from nature and built civilizations, which not only protect us from the dangers but also supplies us with everything to lead a life of dignity and comfort.

Again some of the damn happenings are quite predictable like the daily complaints of a nagging spouse or office boss and you have already a standard predetermined response to them. Let us say your car has developed a technical snag because of wear and tear of a part. You immediately take your car to a service centre and get the part replaced. For any damages, you claim insurance which  you have bought along with your car as a response to those uncertainties.

If you are sick, you see a doctor for treatment. The unending problems just keep nagging you and you have to deal with them like a good test batsman plays spin, googly, swing and remain not out till the end of the innings. And with lessons learnt in life, your skills can only improve.

But as life keeps throwing curveballs at you, unfortunately, you will be badly bruised and battered sometimes and will be at your wits’ end as to how to respond. And most surprisingly, they will quite often come all at once rather than one after another, making it more difficult to manage. You have no choice but to respond or else you will be incapacitated.

To put things back in rail, the response has to ideally be as robust as the challenge is or even stronger. World’s coronavirus response had to be bigger than the pandemic itself and that is how it could be contained.

Damn things may be self-inflicted or accidental or caused by others intentionally or unknowingly. In real life though, heroism is not so much about finding someone responsible for it and going dashing and smashing against them as it is about healing your wounds, lifting yourself up again and living a life of purpose perhaps even greater than before.

Remarkable human stories of courage and resilience are made when people overcome the challenges as many do not survive the crippling blow served by undesirable happenings. After a traumatic experience, when someone fights back to life, their stories become truly life-affirming and examples for others to follow in times of crisis.

One heartening aspect about it is that  there is support all around us. A doctor prescribes medicine, the raw materials for which come from the Earth. In a wider sense, the universe that gifts us those damn things is also the source of ideas, knowledge and wisdom for dealing with them and is ever ready to guide us.

The natural immunity the universe has built in us have prevented so many ailments which we will never come to know. Many wounds, mental or physical, heal on their own over time without us taking great care of them. The universe by its very nature is self-healing. It provides us with a robust support system and prompts us to take affirmative action in response to the negative happenings in life.

Besides all these, we have our aspirations to achieve, which throw their own unique challenges. We have our dreams to realise and promises to keep and a few hills to climb, if not peaks. Our individual journeys are as smooth or as rough as they can be.

But damn things can upset our plan, so uncertainties have to be factored in; caution has to exercised; and most importantly, we have to build our strength bit by bit to be able to adequately respond to them. And we have to surrender ourselves to the guidance of the universe for the rest or a large part of our response.