Punishment, Or how we like to explain our failures.

When I was a little child, I used to go to school alone. On the road to school, I used to skip the lines between the tiles I found in the sidewalk. For me, touching a line was something I should never do. Whenever I touched one, I was expecting something to go wrong. 

I was getting anxious every time something is altered in my stuff or even in my schoolbag.

The way I used to get dressed and the way I used to put my stuff in the wardrobe remained the same for many years. The shoes I was wearing... Wait, I mean I was wearing the same sandals everyday till they were worn out or till some knave robbed them at the door of some mosque and forced me to go home barefoot. I said I was anxious, I started to explain my failures at school. I was relating them to the changes made in my stuff, to the lines I touched or to the sandals I changed. Call it fear of change or metathesiophobia, it doesn't matter.

 

The way we make the link between two unrelated facts is really incomprehensible.

 

We often connect our failures to the sins we committed. We relate our failures to God's punishment and we pretermit the fact that the failure may be caused by our utter recklessness or extreme shiftlessness and laziness. Everybody likes to blame others for his failures instead of taking responsibility. But what if the person's efforts led to naught, isn't God punishment behind his failures?

 

I have a close friend that used to tell me [when we were students] that if he commits some sin, whatever kind of sins, he would never see success and God's wrath will fall on him. If a man fears the Lord because he dreads his earthly [or even heavenly] punishment, that is no worshipping at all. He is fooled. The divine intention for menacing us from earthly punishment is not essentially retributive. It's mainly deterrent, and was created to discourage transgressions.

 

Students and workers relating their failures to God's punishment start to ask questions and delve into the past looking for cruel sins they perpetrated. This way of thinking curbs them and impedes their march towards success. Explaining the failures may either move a person forward or hold him back.

 

Success doesn't just fall blind-flying into your lap, but saying that we fail because God wanted to scourge us is, for me, unjust towards the Almighty. The reasons behind our failures lie primarily in ourselves, our way of thinking, the work we do, the amount of time we devote and the willingness to succeed.

All things are possible to him that believes...