Everything happens for a reason, probably a good one

A true story of adversity and the lesson it taught me

Nabanita Dhar
3 min readMay 22, 2018

12 years have passed since that fateful night of my accident which involved fire and a lot of pain. I think it took me about 6 months, an entire semester of engineering, to be entirely cured. The scars remained though. Yes, and they still remain as a reminder of something which we all tend to forget, the very cliched ‘everything happens for a reason, probably a good one,’ theory.

But it wasn’t easy to reach that conclusion let alone believe in it. It is only now, several years later that the event of that night, that near-death accident makes sense. The path to accepting it as something that led to great things wasn’t an easy one at all. In fact, even now when something terrible happens or things don’t go my way, I tend to forget that it might all be for my own good. But yes, that accident which might have very well ended my life, the scars still serve as a reminder of the fact that times change and good things do often come out of unfortunate times.

Two weeks after being released from the hospital with severe burns on both my thighs, everything and everyone depressed me. A trip to the bathroom was almost always plagued with bloodied steps because the wounds weren’t still healed. I remember pulling down the pictures of Gods I prayed to since I was a child. I had lost faith. I was broken.

What I couldn’t understand was why did I have to be the one getting burnt? You should know that I was in the sixth and probably the most important semester of my engineering with all placement interviews poised just a few weeks from my accident. It was unfair. I felt cheated by everything I believed in.

But that’s a thing of the past now. A dozen odd years have passed and do you know what I have realized? I think that accident was probably one of the best things to have ever happened to me. If I wouldn’t have ended up at the hospital on that fateful night, my husband and I would have never started dating. Yes, that’s true. And most importantly, I wouldn’t have ever got the two-year-old who showers me with kisses every time she notices the scars on my thighs. It all worked out for the better in the end.

So, as I said, everything happens for a reason, a good one at that. It’s difficult to notice when we are in the throes of despair. Sometimes it might even take years before we see the upside to our struggles. Sometimes the tragedy is too personal and earth-shattering to even try to make sense of it. But know that more often than not adversity leaves us with some sort of a gift.

Think about it.

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Read more posts from me here : Random Thoughts Naba

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Nabanita Dhar

Nabanita Dhar is a Software Engineer, Freelance Writer, Blogger and working mom. Author of Letters in Ice.