A saint found a group of family members on the banks, shouting
in anger at each other. He turned to his disciples, smiled and asked. “Why do
people shout in anger at each other?” One of them said, “Because we lose our calm, we shout.” Disciples gave some other answers but none
satisfied the other disciples. Finally, the saint explained.
“When two people are angry at each other, their hearts distance
a lot. To cover that distance they must shout to be able to hear each other.
The angrier they are, the stronger they will have to shout to hear each other
to cover that great distance. What happens when two people fall in love? They don't shout at each other but talk softly, because
their hearts are very close. The distance between them is either non-existent
or very small.”
The saint continued, “When they love each other even more, what
happens? They do not speak, but only whisper. Finally, they even need not to
whisper, they only look at each other and that's all. That is how close two people
are when they love each other.” He looked at his disciples and said. “So when
you argue does not let your hearts get distant. Do not say words that distance
each other more. Or else there will come a day when the distance is so great
that you will not find the path to return.
At the moment, the human ingenuity, science, info-tech gadgets,
and a huge treasury of knowledge, which are the byproducts of globalization has
altered the course of history in the past few decades. Hence one has to admit
that they had facilitated our lives, but on the other hand they had fashioned
our lives that we set up no time for those who call for our love, care and
time. Since we are too busy in making a living in this highly developed period
of history but we put out of our mind to make a life, by not being able to
notice what is happening in the lives of our parents, siblings and children. We
just desire to see our goals to be accomplished, our wants and needs to be
satisfied and our dreams to come true. No one wishes to care about any one’s
dreams, goals, needs and commitments. Every one of us is living a life of
selfishness, greed and exploitation.
This age can be rightly regarded as “tissue paper age.”
We are getting masters in professional ethics, but we forget to
learn the art of making our society civilized. Our educational institutions
offer a wide array of subjects that can be found vividly supportive in making a
prosperous living, but they have no courses designed to learn about the
humanity, emotions, love, care and why we needed it. So question is how we can
live a life where there is no anger, conflict and pettiness, but there is
plenty of happiness, peace, prosperity and harmony.
The bone of contention is our ego, the bigger the ego, the
bigger the suffering we may face. We must smash the ego and let the water of
joy, shower on us. The anger we carry is a sign of insecurity, inferiority and
complexes that we have, and symbolizes the loss of control on ourselves and
takeover by the external elements or the external persons. So work on your
insecurities and your anger will be gone and replaced by peace.
There must be win-win communication to be adopted to avoid the
disharmony, disrespect, conflict and loss of relations. Even a simple “thank
you” and “please” has “nuclear power” to turn the situations as we have wanted.
We must nourish ourselves with attitude of “gratitude”, as it gives
satisfaction and a notion of fulfillment.
One of the basic needs of every human being is the need to be
loved, to have our wishes and feelings taken seriously, to be validated as
people who matter. We are not certain to stay for another day to laugh, love,
work or play, these have to be done right away. These are the genuine nuts and
bolts of a dreamed life, which in fact is easy to live, if we are able to find
the true way. As the great Persian poet Hafez Shiraz once said, “every base you
see is faulty, except that of love, which is flawless.”
Every one of us wants to be valued and appreciated by others who
matter for us, even though the greatest intellects of the time felt this need
to be appreciated by someone close to them. We need to appreciate our siblings,
children, friends and relatives, even though their accomplishment is small
enough, but they must get the nuts of appreciation. Sometimes it takes only few
words to do so, but it makes the relations alive, motivated and even stronger.
It is a necessary formality.
We all are beggars of happiness. We depend on our parents,
siblings and friends to bring happiness for us. But what happens, we just
augment the beggary for happiness, and doesn’t let ourselves to bestow
happiness to others. In order to endorse happiness around us, we don’t have to
be the beggars of happiness but we have to be the givers of happiness. Then
only we can sustain happy and healthy relations.
So give up the clouds of discord and war and spread the good
will, peace and harmony among the people. Just forget about the past, and make
a commitment to live your new life, right here and right now. This is the right
time to know that you can’t control your life but it is really up to you to
control the consequences. Remember you have the talent to do this, because it
is not a rocket science, it is just simple as in implementation but results are
tremendous.
