Have we gotten everything upside down in this world? I just wrote a realization, “When the important becomes unimportant, everything unimportant occupies the importance.In other words, when the pursuit of the divine becomes unimportant, everything else becomes important.”
What are we placing importance on?
How others treat us?
What are we wearing?
Who won the match?
Which political party is doing what?
Which is the latest gadget?
Did that girl smile at me?
Whom will I marry?
What does he/she think of me?
How can I get the next promotion?
What will I do after four months?
These are the thoughts going on in our minds. What about the below questions?
Who am I?
Is God always near?
Does he love me unconditionally?
How do these understandings impact my life?
Clearly, unimportant has displaced the important in our lived. As a result, our lives have become hollow and meaningless. And not only that but also joyless, turbulent, depressing, and frustrating. We are completely controlled by our enemies: greed, lust, anger, attachment, and egotism. And we have forgotten our friends: contentment, love, selfless service, patience, humility. A friend is one who brings joy. Isn’t it?
All our friends these days bring us more and more misery. This undertone of misery becomes louder and louder as our life progresses. And so we need more and more engagements and noises from the outside to cover this inner noise, this inner misery. The outer misery that we face is just a reflection of this inner misery. The life is trying to say something to us that we are stubbornly ignoring at our own peril. Ultimately, life will not succumb to us; we’ll need to succumb to life. And what does life want for us? Nothing but realization of our own self. It’s like a mother chasing down her child down the streets to catch him and force him to study lest he may remain illiterate. For a child, his mother is brutal and stubborn and harsh, but only through the wisdom of the mother can he understand that this harshness is good for him. The real harshness would be in allowing him to remain uneducated.
And then, he does not really need to run away from education. He can do that willingly, and in such a case, the mother will serve him like no one else. Everything he needs will be brought to him lest his studies may be disturbed. He’ll be showered with motherly love and care. It’s not that motherly care was absent when he was running away from the studies, but it was present in a form that he wasn’t liking.
When the child recognizes the importance of education in his life, the importance of useless chatting, video games, and callously roaming in the streets vanishes on its own. Till he recognizes the importance of the education, he considers the fulfillment of his freedom in doing these things. However, once he realizes the importance of education, he understands that the real fulfillment of his freedom is in sincere education. He then understands the reason behind all his mother’s scoldings. He then thanks his mother for all the problems she created for him because without his mother’s strictness, he could never have gotten on the right track of education.