Why Some People Enter Your Life Only to Teach You a Lesson

I’m going to give you an analogy. Think of the ocean and the waves. In this ocean, there are two pieces of wood floating. Because of the current, these two pieces of wood suddenly come together. They float side by side for a while, and then, naturally, with time, they drift away again in different directions.

In our life, relationships are exactly like those pieces of wood. You come across a partner, a friend, a family member, or your parents, and you feel close to them. But with time, they gradually drift apart and might start to feel like strangers again. You will never understand who you truly are if you keep holding on to other people or other temporary things that you own. It can be your friends, your parents, your relatives, your siblings, your partner, your spouse, your house, your clothes, your money, etc. Every one of these things is external to your true soul. You’re not your physical body, but a beautiful spark of light. You have existed long before these temporary connections began.

The Law of Karma and the Purpose of These Encounters

None of these meetings or encounters happen in your life by accident. The relationships that are formed here have a karmic link. Before you were born into this world, your soul was drawn to a specific family, a specific life by a silent and subtle force called karma. Karma is nothing but the pattern of your own past actions and choices from earlier lives. It’s like a magnet that attracts other souls to you so that you can work out your karmic debts and past actions together.

It’s a blessing to attract these people into your life who love you, who care for you, who challenge you, or even hurt you and leave you just to teach you a lesson. You attract them into your life to help you grow as a soul. They will act as a mirror, showing you your true self. It gives you an opportunity to get rid of all these vices like grudges, anger, fear, or pride. If you can face these difficult experiences with patience, without getting too emotional about them, then it will help you wash away your old past karma. Think of that difficult person as someone who is here to help you unlock the prison of your ego.

Let me tell you a story of a sage from ancient times. It’s said that he understood that he did not have one human teacher. He had 24 different teachers in his life to teach him various lessons in his lifetime. He understood that the entire world, nature, everything is just a classroom where every creature and every element is like a teacher. Whenever you meet someone, whenever there’s a human being who enters your life and challenges you, think of them as teachers. Show them the same level of respect and love as you’d have for a teacher.

Five Specific Lessons from Nature

The Earth – Lesson to Be Stable

Think of the earth as your first teacher. When you walk on the earth, the earth stays stable. We human beings will exploit the earth to extract the natural resources. We’ll dig it. We’ll plough it. But yet, the earth stays stable. It doesn’t mind the disruption. The earth has a purpose to sustain life, and it does so as its duty, no matter the circumstances. This should teach us that when people treat us selfishly or harshly, we must always remain stable and patient, just like the earth. It’ll just help us build our inner strength. We need to learn patience in our life. And we will learn it either the hard way or the easy way.

The Wind – Interaction Without Getting Involved

Think of the wind or the air as another great teacher. The wind blows everywhere, passes through every living being, whether it’s a flower, animals, human beings, or even buildings. The wind will never cling to a single entity. It remains pure and free of any attachment. Whenever it passes through a garden which smells beautiful, the wind will never stay in the garden just because the garden or the flowers smell good. It will continue passing by without getting attached.

In the same way, we meet different kinds of people. Some are kind, some are negative or toxic. But the lesson remains that whenever we interact with them, we should not get attached to them. We can coexist together. We can meet them for a while, learn our lessons, help them out if they’re in need, and then move on. We should not let their negativity or toxicity enter our mind or disturb our inner self. This is the lesson of moving through the world without getting entangled with worldly affairs.

Pingala – How She Found Peace Through Disappointment

Let me tell you a story of a woman named Pingala. She used to seek her happiness in the materialistic world. She had a lot of worldly desires. In short, she is just like any other human being who thinks that her happiness depends upon other people’s behavior.

If someone is rude to you, you get disturbed. If someone talks to you properly, you feel good. Basically, you are giving the key to your happiness to someone else. Anyhow, one night, she was waiting for someone to arrive. And the person was late. She fell asleep waiting. She was extremely frustrated. But with that frustration, she did realize that trying to chase pleasures or happiness will only frustrate her. If she had had no expectation of that person, she would have never gotten frustrated in the first place. That disappointment helped her realize the deeper meaning of this detachment. And that itself brought her the ultimate inner peace.

When people let us down, we often get disappointed because we have a certain bit of expectation from them. It’s painful to accept that they do not value you the same way you value them. It’s fine. Your behavior should not be dependent upon the other person. The whole illusion breaks apart when we realize that our inner happiness has nothing to do with the outside world. The more you crave, the more your suffering will be. By letting go of that craving, you can let go of your suffering. And once you’ve understood this, you’ll find your inner peace.

The Bracelet of a Young Girl – Lesson of Solitude

Let me tell you about a young girl who was once preparing food for some guests. She used to wear many beautiful pieces of glass bracelets on her wrist. Since they were made of glass, they used to make a lot of sound, when they clashed against each other. She couldn’t focus on cooking. So, just to stop that noise, she took off the bracelets one by one. After removing around five to six bracelets, she was left with around two. But they still made the same noise when they touched each other. Finally, she removed one more, leaving just a single bracelet on each arm. Finally, the noise stopped. She was able to work peacefully.

Here is a very big lesson for all of us. Whenever there are many people surrounding us with different opinions, egos, and interests, things will clash. They will make noise. There will be disagreements. If we want to find peace and solitude, we have to spend our time alone. We can only quiet our minds when we are in solitude. Then, we can evaluate our lives and connect with our true nature without getting distracted by external forces.

The Pigeon’s Family – Lesson to Never Get Attached

Let me tell you a story of a pigeon and its family. The mother and father built a beautiful nest for their family and they had a couple of beautiful chicks. They were all happy in that family. One day, when the parents were away to get food for the family, a hunter came by and caught the baby pigeons in a net. By around that time, the parents had returned and saw their children trapped. They were so attached to their children that they flew right into that net to be with the children and sacrificed themselves. Now, the hunter not only had the baby chicks but also the parents in his net.

The story of this pigeon family teaches us the danger of extreme attachment. When we attach our happiness or identity to a different individual, even if it’s our spouse or parents, then we move away from our truer self, which is divine, and our connection to the divine. True love gives space and freedom. You can care about a person deeply but that doesn’t mean that you will self-sabotage and destroy yourself because of that attachment.

The Ultimate Lesson Is to Conquer the Ego

Whenever you face a conflict with another human being, try to resolve the conflict with love instead of anger. Both anger and love are emotions. And it’s for sure that anger has never ever resolved any conflict. Love could resolve some conflicts or might not. But there’s always a chance that it could.

Just understand that every encounter that you have with another human being is always a lesson in disguise. If you can get over the temporary sadness, then you can attain long-lasting happiness.