24. Realize the uniqueness of being YOU!
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We often why wonder bad things happen only to us.
We think of our neighbor who bought a new air conditioned system and the temperature in our homes automatically goes up. If a friend buys a new house our home becomes uninhabitable. If a brother gets a new wife the wife at home becomes ugly and filled with faults!
Understand what is happening here. We do not live our life on our basic needs and requirements. We live in jealous comparison with what our friends, neighbors and colleagues possess. Our wants are based on jealousy, nurtured by greed, and has no finish line in sight. It goes on expanding, miring us deeper and deeper into unhappiness.
Jealousy is the root cause for this comparison. It is a terrible waste of our energy. It simply drains us and saps us of all energy. It is a futile emotion with no productive function.
Be clear! This happens because we think that we are the best. We all struggle constantly to be number one and number two in something or other. If we line up all the people in the world based on one attribute or another, most of us will be in the middle somewhere.
When we chase an object out of jealousy we quickly become number one in reaching the graveyard. It is a race to no where. The seeds of this are sown very early in our education system when we start ranking our children based on perceived capabilities. Once you rank the first three, does it mean that the rest of the class is useless?
Let us get out of this fatal habit of ranking people. It only leads to comparisons, jealousy, and achievements of other people become prominent in our life. Such comparisons are based on how good we think others are in what seems to be important to us. This leads to unhappiness with in a person, within family, and in the community. Only if we remove this comparison can we can work towards communal happiness.
There is a way out of the jealousy trap. Realize uniqueness of being YOU. Let us all work to realize our own special uniqueness. When we spend time with ourselves we understand several things for the first time. We know that we have our own abilities and capabilities which may be different from those of others. When we allow these unique abilities with passion to flower to the fullest extent we will realize true happiness.