Why do bad things happen to good ppl, & how does Sikhi advise us to deal w/ tragedy? This is one of the most common topics of interest for anyone having questions about the faith & I figured I'd briefly share how I approach this issue w/ the hope it may help someone this Vaisakhi

I think the first and most important point of consideration is that dealing with hardship isn't a reflection of you or what you 'deserve'. One of the biggest traps ppl fall into is rationalizing their suffering as punishment for being a terrible person or thinking they deserve it

This is directly tied to an assumption most of us implicitly operate under, which is the belief that the universe 'owes' us something - we believe things *should* be a certain way and when they're not, it is the universe withholding our dues as a form of penalizing for a mistake

However, this couldn't be further from the truth. If pain and suffering is only reserved for terrible individuals who must surely deserve it, why was Guru Arjan Dev Ji shaheed after days of torture? If the loss of a loved one is retribution for our (or their) sins, why did

Guru Gobind Singh Ji of all people lose his father, mother and four sons before also personally becoming shaheed? If there were any souls who deserved nothing but goodness (if we go by the idea good ppl get good and bad ppl get badness) then it would be the Guru Sahibs.

But if any of us experienced a fraction of what our Gurus dealt with, we'd be complaining about the difficulty God is putting us through. And this begs two questions. Firstly, if the *Gurus* of all ppl experienced challenging times, who are *we* to believe we're above going

through any uncomfortable circumstances. And secondly, if the Gurus experienced what can be termed as 'suffering', and they were the greatest souls on earth, then what exactly is the cause of 'bad' things happening to 'good' ppl? The higher level perspective answer to this is

that we live in a reality which evolved along a certain path due to a number of factors, each of which helps determine every aspect of our lives. For example, humans are carbon-based lifeforms that're mostly water by weight. This already greatly restricts us as it means we

couldn't survive anywhere without access to abundant carbon and water (along with a bunch of other natural boundaries outside of which we'd die). That's just the way things are. But why? Well because that's how we evolved. And we evolved that way because of evolution through

natural selection. And it is genetic mutations from generation to generation that help propel NS. But the implications of all this are, if humans (like all life) evolved b/c of evolution through NS, which relies on mutations, then it means the possibility of a negative mutation

one that results in the offspring having a lesser chance of survival on their own, is ever-present. This explains the myriad of genetic diseases and child abnormalities out there, but also why some ppl come across as crazy talented and 'gifted' compared to most. The same applies

to pretty much everything else, and there are logical reasons for why things in the world are the way they are. Is it God being baselessly partial in preferring certain folks over others and blessing some with so much happiness and others with so much pain? Again if that were

the case, what explains the Guru having to sit on a hot plate after physical torture, the chote Sahibzaade being bricked alive, the countless generations of Sikhs who were beheaded, burnt alive and exiled into the jungles for their faith? The real explanation, to me, seems to be

that the world is set up in a certain manner &things are allowed to 'play out'. The universal force behind the diversity of life on our planet (and perhaps everywhere) is evolution by NS. But the flipside is because the same mechanism which continuously refines life to be better

adapted to its environment can also be a negative and produce an offspring with abnormalities, it logically follows that genetic disease in some people is an unavoidable part of the whole game. Human brains are powerful enough to create empires, civilizations, technology and

medicine, but we are also hyper-competitive social animals that will continuously seek to enlarge those empires, dominate other civilizations, create the most advanced weaponry etc. and all of those realities contributed heavily to historic human suffering. We are controlled by

forces as old as the universe itself and shaped by processes that are billions of years running (lobster psychochemical flight or flight response isn't that dissimilar to what happens to humans, for example, because the building blocks of ur brain were determined long long ago).

Instead of viewing it as a punishment from God, recognize the depth behind the natural order of things and our place in it all as temporary spectators governed by causes and effects far greater than anything our minds could ever fully comprehend. I believe this is at least

partially what 'recognizing' and 'accepting hukam' entails (though that deserves its own topic).

The second part of the answer to this question (why bad things happen to good ppl) is from a more personal perspective, and one that has a lot to do with the meaning of Vaisakhi

We live in kalyug, and this is observable in the tainted morals & ethics of most ppl in society. During the time of the Gurus it was having to deal with tyrannical rulers who quite literally made multiple Gurus shaheed, their children shaheed & generations of Sikhs shaheed.

More recently we dealt with Indira Gandhi, the decade which followed & now the farmer's protest. On an individual scale, we deal with the consequences of others' bad morality as well - think of all the people affected by drunk drivers, and so on. And here what Sikhi would say is

that the solution is to lay your head before the Guru and nothing else. We can't change the fact it is kalyug. But it is also a fact that Guru Nanak Dev Ji & the Panth they began *is* the answer to kalyug & the preserver of righteousness in our times. And we *can* choose to

accept the Guru, the Sikhi they left behind, in order to help ourselves. Time and time the Guru calls Sikhi the Game of Love, with the first requirement being giving our heads. On Vaisakhi 1699, the Guru demanded literal skin in the game by asking who was *truly* willing to do so

And in this Sikhi doesn't ask you to be meek. 'Giving your head' isn't a synonym for laying down and taking whatever beating life gives you. On the contrary, giving your head is akin to leaving your own shortcomings at the Guru's feet and gaining access to an ocean of bliss,

contentment and courage. When the original panj pyare raised their hands on Vaisakhi 1699, their heads were not really cut off. The Guru took nothing from them. However, their willingness to give their head meant they were transformed into new men, ones who knew no fear, and the

strength to deal with whatever life threw their way, to the point where staring into the face of certain death at Chamkaur became a non-issue. There are 'bad things' which happen as a consequence of the world/universe just being set up the way it is. And there are bad things

which happen as an outcome of being in kalyug. The solution to dealing with both is understanding the cause behind these 'bad' things (which comes from going through Gurbani and becoming familiar with Hukam), and then strengthening our connection with the fountain of bliss, the

Guru. For a tangible look at how Sikhi inspires normal people to achieve extraordinary feats of resilience in the face of all odds, see this great article by @sialmirzagoraya on the institute of Sangat & its role in society during the Mughal invasions https://sialmirzagoraya.medium.com/sangat-and-society-the-sikh-remaking-of-the-north-indian-public-sphere-c655ad7c72fa

This is just my understanding and all mistakes are my own. Sorry for any spelling mistakes I typed this pretty quickly, this is a pretty simply explanation I want to do a proper article on later if enough people are interested