Wednesday, September 16, 2009

HOW TO OVERCOME TENSIONS AND HAVE PEACE OF MIND - 8


HOW TO OVERCOME TENSIONS AND HAVE PEACE OF MIND - 8

The last practical suggestion, suggestion number six, is: Help others. The others, as I said, are not apart from us. We and others are parts of the One Great Whole. No man is an island. We must not cut ourselves off from others. If we wish to live a healthy life, mentally, morally, spiritually, - we must be concerned about the welfare of others, specially our less fortunate brothers and sisters. The selfish man, - who is interested only in his own welfare and that of his near and dear ones, - is never a happy man. The happiness that we give to others, comes back to us. We all want to be happy. It is only when we go out and make others happy, that happiness flows into our own lives.

Some years ago, there came to me a young man. He was a bundle of tension. He was in jitters, for he had been jilted by the girl he loved. Frustrated with life, he was on his way to the railway station to throw himself underneath a running train when, as he said, the thought occurred to him to see me before committing suicide.

I said to him: “My friend, will you do one thing for me?”

At that moment I had with me a ten-rupee note. I passed it on him and asked him to purchase fruits, - oranges, sweet limes, plantains, - and take them to the poor patients’ ward in the Sassoon Hospital. “Go and meet the destitute children there,” I said to him. “Those that have no one in the world to care for them, go and meet them, speak to them in love, look into their needs, give them fruits, then come and meet me.”

After a couple of hours, he came back: he was a different man. He said to me: “I never knew there were so many sufferings in the world! My sorrow is nothing as compared to the suffering I saw today. I have returned from the Hospital, convinced that life is not meant to be thrown away, but to be spent in the service of those that are in suffering and pain! I shall not commit suicide: henceforth I shall live as a servant of the poor and needy, the sick and afflicted, the forsaken and forlorn!”

Look around you, my friends! You find, don’t you, that the world is sad, is broken, is torn with tragedy, is smitten with suffering. Living in such a world, you must live to help others. The day on which we have not helped a brother here, a sister there to lift the load on the rough road of life, is a lost day, indeed. Therefore speak sweetly and gently with all. And to everyone who meets you, pass on the sunbeams of your smile. And the loving service you render will be to you as music at midnight.

(Author: Sri J P Vaswani)