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One
can sit under the porch of his home complaining
that it is very dirty inside. There are two
options. Go inside and clean up. In the process
spiders may fall on your head. If you are
mortally scared of spiders, use the other
option, find a house cleaned by someone else and
occupy it. Then you can sit there and complain
about the dirty house and the person who was
supposed to clean it but did not.
The other day I went to visit a friend who lives
at the other end of the city. While I was
driving down the road of his colony, I came
across a group of people standing by the side of
the road and chatting. Just as I was approaching
this group I noticed a familiar face walking on
the other side of the road. It was our cable TV
operator. He smiled at me and I smiled back.
Then as I turned my head, to my amusement I
found that all the people of the group standing
by the side of the road were smiling and nodding
at me. Those people were strangers to me, why
were they trying to be so nice? As I see it,
they smiled because they thought I had smiled at
them. That is why people say “the world is a
mirror.” You smile, they smile. You frown, they
frown. So if you accept the world and smile, the
world will smile back. You can have almost the
whole world smiling at you through out the day.
Try it out. We should not only be positive
inside we should appear to be positive too.
Positiveness is the cure for all ills, not
lamentation.
The problem starts when we are not judgmental
about ourselves but are critical about the
world. We want the world to be as per our own
liking and that never happens. So we scowl and
frown. We extend our sadness or sourness to
others with frowns and scowls. We get back the
same and the world seems very unfriendly.
Maturity of thought is in developing a clear
understanding of the situation without being too
critical or judgmental. One has to understand
the ground situation before arriving at
conclusions. World over there are people who are
fighting the dark side of society. The effort of
such people has to be accepted and appreciated
just like the non-participation of people who
stay away has to be accepted. Critical and
judgmental people are unhappy people. They
rarely make sacrifices and do pathetically
little to change things. They sit aside venting
their frustrations by criticizing, lamenting and
indulging in wishful thinking.
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Comments: |
Great
advice, Rajeshji. There is a saying
that if you want love, first spread
love. I will try to follow in more
and better ways.
When I was living in Bihar, I used
to go to my friend's house, and
along the way, I would greet the
kids near his home. My friend told
me, "Anwar, you are older than them
and they must greet you first." I
asked, "Where is it written that
they have to do first and not me? It
is a duty to all of us that whoever
gets the chance, greets others."
After a couple of months, all the
kids who were living around his
house started greeting me as soon as
they saw me. Once, I asked my friend
if he had noticed anything
different. "You live here. How many
times do these kids greet you? See
the results I reap for a couple of
months of effort. Now these kids are
saying 'hi' to me. If I were too
proud and expecting them to take the
initiative, I would never get this
kind of respect from them in my
whole life. Kids are like green
bamboo: you have to shape them." In
my daily life, I make an effort to
be friendly and respectful to other
people. In my work, I have seen
people do things for me that they
would not willingly do for others
because of how they are treated by
others. I have set the standard that
they are my peers, no matter what
job they are assigned to do. - S.
M. Khurshid Anwar, New York, USA -
Jan. 21, 2006 |
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