Have you ever experienced something that might have disturbed your pace when you were doing something?
You are peacefully doing your work, and something you never asked for happens; how irritating it is, right?
But let me tell you a story, this happened to a man who was driving back home at night.
Imagine a long, empty road with no streetlights, not a single person around, and no sound except for the engine. Everything around him was dark. He kept his eyes on the road while listening to the radio in his car.
Then, out of the blue, a small mongoose ran across the road in front of his car. The man quickly pressed the brakes so he wouldn’t hit it. It was that mere second in which he made a little choice that made a big difference.
Because when he slowed down, he noticed something ahead, a huge pothole right ahead of the mongoose. If he had kept driving at the same speed, his car would have first hit the innocent animal and then fallen right into the pothole. Just imagine what could have happened if he had kept going; the wheels could have been damaged, and he could have been badly hurt. But he was safe because he slowed down to keep the wildlife safe.
To me, this incident feels like a reminder. Sometimes nature helps us in ways we don’t understand. Maybe the mongoose was there to test the man. If he cared enough to save a small life, then God made sure to save him. If he didn’t care, he might have ended up in trouble.
There is a saying by a famous saint, Maulana Rumi, he says, ”Do a good deed and throw it in the river, it will come back to you in a desert.” It means when we do something good, even if it’s small, it doesn’t disappear. It comes back to us in ways we do not expect. Helping someone today might help us tomorrow. Showing care for others might bring care to us when we need it most.
We only notice big things, big wins, big losses, big events. But sometimes the most important lessons come from small moments. A small animal crossing the road. A simple choice to press the brakes. That was all it took to change what could have been a very bad night into a safe night.
It also makes me ask myself: how many times have I been protected without even knowing it? A delay in something I wanted to have that annoyed me saved me from an accident. A small obstacle pushed me onto a safer path.
The truth is, life has a balance. What goes around comes around.
Another saying of Maulana Rumi is “In this earth, in this soil, in this pure field, let’s not plant any seeds other than seeds of Compassion/Kindness and Love.”
If you give kindness, you often get kindness back, maybe not in the way you expect it, but it does come back in a beautiful form.
So the next time something slows you down, don’t be too quick to get upset. Don’t think of it only as a problem. It might be the very thing that is keeping you safe. Because sometimes there are blessings in disguise.