Do you want a life of peace? A life of happiness? A life in which everything is perfect?
Why?
What good is a life of peace and happiness? What good it does to the world and what good it brings out of you?
The desire for a peaceful and happy life is meaningless. A meaningful life is more important than a peaceful and happy life.
I want a life full of pain, struggle and suffering any day, if it brings along with it meaning. If it makes me a better person. If it somehow helps and improves the soul of another person.
If your life is perfect, you don’t need to make any changes in it. It also assumes that you’re perfect too, which actually you’re not. For no perfect human being can lead a peaceful and happy life while millions others suffer and struggle for the basic necessities of life.
So, I don’t want a peaceful and happy life. I want a life that has meaning and that strives to improve the lives of others.
A person is often influenced by the actions of others. They remember how you treated them and most often that treatment is contagious. If it was kindness; kindness will spread. It it was apathy; apathy will spread.
You being a person whose basic necessities are covered; how can you remain in peace and celebrate in happiness, when there are others who continue to suffer. What kind of person that makes you?
There is someone who is struggling. If you help out that person in his misery, he will remember the act. And when he will be in a position to help, his conscience will bring your act of kindness into his remembrance. He will then do for someone else in need, what you did for him.
An act of kindness surely helps the needy but it improves the soul of the person who commits it. When you help someone out there, it is you whose soul reaches a higher and improved state. The thought that propelled it and the intention that drove it are the reasons humanity was created.
Imagine a society where each individual looks after the other. Where everyone is concerned for the well being of the other. Where you all live as a family. Where even before bringing the first morsel near your mouth, your heart wants you to ascertain whether your fellow human being living next door has eaten or not. That society is the society in which unconditional love prevails over every other intention. And in such a society is the habitat of God.
God is good and He loves people who are good. So don’t let anyone tell you that only those who believe in your God are good. Every act of kindness is an inspiration of God.
A heart that loves unconditionally is a heart touched by God.
So why is it that we are capable of loving our children unconditionally but not the children of others?
Why do we feel for the pain of our loved ones but not of others?
Why are we good only for a select few in this world?
Because we are scared.
We are scared that once we identify with the pain and suffering of a stranger, we will be morally compelled to help them out. And helping in such cases is often synonymous to sacrifice, struggle and danger. You don’t get anything in return but you have a lot to lose. You can lose your peace, happiness and security. But if you do not help them, after identifying with their pain, your conscience will hold you guilty.
You might be secure at home, but your nights will be sleepless. None of us want this to happen, because we are in so much love with our peaceful life that it becomes far easier for us to ignore the stranger on the road who could be going through hell of a problem, than identifying with him and holding ourselves guilty of apathy.
The world changes. One individual at a time. And often this individual happens to be you.
Money can not fix the problems created by the apathy of human beings. Only love can fix those problems.
We have made it a habit to ignore others. We don’t want anything to do with the problems of others. The child who is begging for alms on the other side of the street; what do I have to do with her?
Your mind says – “There could be millions of such children around the world like this one. How many am I going to help?”
But you don’t have to fix the lives of millions of children in the world. You have to go near just this one who is standing on the other side of the street and ask her “how are you? have you eaten anything ?”
Look, your asking this question doesn’t change anything for the world, but it does change you.
A moment earlier, you were one of those billions of people who saw one such child on the street and moved on. But now, you are one of those who has taken the first step to fix the problem created by apathy. What you’re doing here is nothing short of a miracle.
What you did today changes you forever and it changes the child forever. From now onwards you’re no longer leading a meaningless life. Your life has a purpose – To fix the problems of this world one step at a time.
You’ll never be able to fix all the problems of the world. But the step you took today, did change the world of a child.