If you were to win the lottery, it would be the most unexpected reward in your lifetime.
How about a very small reward? You take pants and shirts to a laundry. Weeks later, you wear the cleaned pants and find a $20 bill in your pocket. You immediately arrange a family dinner at a restaurant.
Once I went to a casino with a family friend. I started playing a quarter-slot machine. All of a sudden I heard the sound of coins pouring with no sign of stopping. Bingo. I thought I had hit the jackpot. When it stopped, I found a receipt for $95. I cashed out with no further playing. Unexpected rewards don’t come often.
Our second daughter, Wrijoya works in Atlanta. Most of the time, she doesn’t tell us that she is coming to visit us for the weekend. She calls when she is close to Columbus and asks us what are we doing, if we are going to or hosting a party. Ten to 15 minutes later, our door bell rings. She is in front of our door. We are excited to see her. She wants to surprise us always. This is another kind of unexpected reward.
The other day, we found a package by our front door. It was from Amazon Prime service. I hadn’t ordered anything lately. There was a book titled “Humans of New York.” There was no name who has sent it and only a slip written, “A gift for you.” Then my cellphone rang and it was Wrijoya on the other end. “Did you get a package?”
In news reports, we hear of accidents happening around the world, from car crashes to plane accidents. Recently a Brazilian plane crashed and 71 lives perished but six survived. Was it an unexpected reward from God for those six survivors? In a case of natural disasters such as fires, earthquakes, tornadoes, floods, we sometimes see a miracle. A baby is untouched, alive and crying. More than half a century ago, a plane crashed in the Andes mountain and there were a few survivors. They had to eat their friends’ flesh to survive 72 days before they were rescued. Are they still living? What do they think of God?
Our life itself is an unexpected reward. I cannot imagine how my mom survived seven births living in a village where there were no doctors. Not only did she survive, we, her seven children, survived.
To simply be alive is a miracle or an unexpected reward. Death isn’t. Death is normal, everyday regular event that will happen to us all. To survive, we are fighting every moment against all odds, from microorganisms to natural disasters. And then there are unexpected gun killings almost every day in our country.
Thus, life itself is an unexpected reward. We should rejoice and shout out loud that we are alive.
Jiben Roy, a native of Bangladesh, teaches chemistry and pharmaceutical sciences at Mississippi University for Women. His email address is [email protected].
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