Broken bangles

It was a regular working day for me. I was working from my home office. My household help Sandhya came to sweep the floors. While sweeping the floor her hand hit against the chair. This resulted in breaking few of her green glass bangles.

I heard the sound of shattering of glass and immediately turned towards her to find out what had happened. I saw her staring at the broken bangles.

"Are you okay? Are you hurt? Please tell me so that I can give you bandage," I ask her out of concern.

Sandhya told me that she was okay and she was not hurt. She started picking up the bangles in her hands. I gave her a bag to throw the broken shards of glass. While picking up the broken ornaments I saw that Sandhya appeared visibly disturbed and worried. I asked her if there was a problem at her household because that could have been a reason for her distress. But she insisted that everything at her home was fine. I was not convince with her answer so I kept probing.

She finally revealed the cause for her distress, "ma'am in my village they say something horrible about broken bangles. These bangles are a symbol of married women's husband's health and prosperity. My mother used to tell me that if the married women accidentally breaks her bangles it means that her husband is in trouble. I am just worried about my husband. My children are still very young. If something happens to him what would I do without him? How would I take care of my children all alone? I am really worried about him". She started crying.

I tried to console her, "Sandhya you are a educated. You should not believe in the old sayings. You should know better. Your husband is going to be fine. Broken glass in this home is not going to hurt him at his workplace for sure. Do not worry about him because he is going to be fine".

Sandhya still had not recovered from the accident and kept thinking about the wellbeing of husband. She had been still crying about the mishap. This made me wonder how some of the traditions and accidents are often linked to the disasters that make people feel responsible for them. Superstitions often create unnecessary distress which I had witnessed with Sandhya.

I understand that in the current time live is uncertain future. We cannot predict the future. We cannot even predict what is going to happen for a the current day. Everything can change from time to time and our future is completely impossible to predict. Yet I believe linking such mishaps with the future is completely unnecessary. It makes us overthink about the unnecessary and unpredicted outcomes. Overthinking about mishaps only bring distress to us.

Hence I believe we should remain in the present and we must not worry about the uncertain future. Worrying about the future is not going to change it so why not live in present instead of worrying about it. Unfortunately I was not able to make Sandhya share my belief system.