A Letter to Devotees of Neem Karoli Baba: Smile. Worrying Solves Nothing
Today, I read somewhere that her worry was about tomorrow, yet she died tonight!
In the quiet hours, when the world seems paused between heartbeats, she lay in bed, her thoughts a tempest. Her worry was about tomorrow. The unseen future loomed large in her mind, a tyrant demanding her peace as ransom. She whispered her fears to the darkness, negotiating with a day that would never come. Tonight, she died.
And tomorrow? It arrived, indifferent to her anxieties, carrying with it a quiet irony: life marches forward, untouched by our fears.
We are creatures of paradox, aren’t we? Anchored to the present, yet ever fixated on the distant horizon. Martin Luther King Jr., with his unyielding faith in justice and progress, once said, “Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase; just take the first step.” Yet how often do we remain paralyzed, worrying about steps we may never climb?
Jim Morrison, the poet of the untamed spirit, sang of life as an open road, a journey without guarantees. “There are things known and things unknown, and in between are the doors,” he mused. Worry is that space between—a door unopened, a possibility untaken, a life unlived.
Her story is not just hers. It is ours. It is the universal narrative of sleepless nights spent rehearsing disasters that rarely arrive. We script our tragedies in advance, as though anxiety might shield us from uncertainty. But it doesn’t. It cannot.
What would change if we truly believed that worrying solves nothing? That a smile—a simple, radical act of defiance—could reclaim the present moment from the clutches of fear? Imagine the freedom in letting go.
To smile in the face of worry is not to dismiss life’s challenges or ignore its complexities. It is an act of wisdom, an embrace of what Morrison might call “the infinite.” It is to live boldly, fully aware that tomorrow is a promise no one can guarantee.
So, let us take our lesson from her, this unnamed soul whose story ends tonight. She is simply a metaphor, a reminder to all of us that life is beautiful. Neem Karoli Baba's divine love is always with us, and his grace is guiding us like a light on a dark, rainy night filled with gray clouds.
Remember, tomorrow the bright sun will rise with rays of hope, love from Neem Karoli Baba, and birds chirping with songs of your courage and hard work. So, as you sleep tonight, remember that NKB is with you forever. Now smile, smile more. For the burden of tomorrow, we need not steal the beauty of today.
Ram Ram
