By Alex Mathew:
Today I sit before my laptop, wondering what to write about. I feel a little bit like a hypocrite. I have written so many things about the way people should be, about philosophy, but today, I sit and wonder where all my wisdom went, when I needed it. My roommate and I are on pretty bad terms, sure, he has some major flaws, but who made it my business to judge him? Who made it my business to punish him with my silence?
It seems now that in all my righteousness, I forgot humility. See, the specialty of pride is that it is blinding, unlike other character flaws, the problem with pride is that a proud man will never be able to see that he is proud and arrogant, and if you can’t see it, you can’t change it.
I had been holding grudges against my roommate, and now I see that the only person being affected was me. It was disturbing my peace of mind, not his. A grudge is like a heavy burden on the person holding it, it is very difficult to have clarity of thought and be unaffected in other areas of my life. And I am pretty sure that I am no different than other people, in this aspect.
I have been constantly looking outside, into the rest of the world, finding problems that need solutions. Today, however I feel a little differently, yes there are things out there that could change for the better, but ultimate satisfaction and happiness really depends on one thing and one thing only, our own outlook towards things.
Every man see’s the world through his own lens, his own little processor (brain). Therefore every man’s experience of what the world is, is different, since it is defined by his own mind. Our perception of this world is remarkably different than what popular thinking would tell us. In my opinion, if we consider the human mind as an isolated system, then everything outside of it exists only because the mind observes it. In our reality, in our minds, a stone exists only because we have seen it, touched it or at least sensed it in some way. Our reality is defined by what we receive from the outside world and how we process it. The world is not a constant, it exists differently in the eye of each observer. You see, we define an apple as a food because we taste it, we know it’s edible, and we eat it, at the same time, if you were an apple tree, you might call it “baby”, and what an apple would mean, what an apple would signify, would be something altogether different, though it is the same material object.
As you can see, our reality is in our hands to define, this world can be a magical and beautiful place if we so choose. Happiness, at the end of the day, lies in the eye of the builder (yes, the one who builds a happy environment 🙂 ). Also, just as we are influenced by the company we keep in so many ways, our view towards the world is also colored by those of people around us.
True happiness is contagious. It is always nice to be someone who does not point fingers, who is always kind, and always forgiving, and it sort of rubs off. These people are really very rare, but the change that they bring to the society around them is very real and incredible. By being good to people who bother us, the only real person that gains is ourselves. And that is the core to the gandhian way. There is an unbelievable amount of mystery and wisdom in these concepts. And it is very difficult to see the truth in this without having an open and unaffected mind.
So today I remind myself, that whatever I am, I spread, whether or not I choose to. I want to spread happiness, what about you?
Image courtesy: http://www.24exp.co.uk/good.html