A few days ago I heard a lady complaining bitterly to her husband: “You’re the big boss around here. I have to scrub and clean for you. I’m a nobody”.
If anyone who feels this way happens
to read this, I want to say to him or her: “This is for you because you are important”.
What makes you say “I’m of no importance; just a cog in the machine?” There is
many a person doing your kind of job who is proud of this responsibility. There
is many a woman too, who is proud to scrub and to get her man’s meal just to
as his king.
Advt
Who has pulled you down so much that
you think yourself a nobody? Who has hurt you so badly in your self -esteem
that you have never recovered from the blow? These are serious enquiries
because I am sure that you are of infinite value.
Let your memory roem right back to
your earliest infancy. Let your emotions recover old shameful forgotten events.
Feel it all again. Remember how completely unbearable it all was. It snapped
life in two. From that horrible moment, life become different. The sun in your
sky was blackened. There was no hope any more. You become “different”. Others
could do well and get there. But not you. Remember how you went into a kind to
shell in your little personality. This was the only retreat left for you. You
could hide in your inner self and find comfort and a lonely solace. Here you
built up your little castle of cynicism where you could pity the fools who were
superficial enough not to become ambitious.
Four Suggestions:
Life passes very quickly. One day you wake up and realize that you don’t count. Depression sets in and you say: “I’m just a cog in the wheel. A nobody, that’s what I am”.
Here are four simple suggestions.
With the help of these I have seen people climb out of hopelessness and
inferiority into a new life of happiness. May be you can do the same.
1. Stop wrong thinking and start right thinking:
This is not as easy as it sounds. The
secret cynicism might have gone on for years and by habit, we get to like the
taste of our hate, humiliation and bitter laughter. This kind of thinking must
stop and a new kind of thinking must take its place.
You share your manhood – or womanhood
– with the rest of the world. You have the same number of fingers and toes as
everyone else. Your heart beats in the same way. You were born in the same way
as the greatest millionaire you ever heard of. The same kind of grey matter
works in your brain as worked in the brain of Einstein or Shakespeare.
Accept yourself right now as a worthwhile human being. Accept yourself
completely, right down to your boots, and keep on accepting yourself. And then
you’ll find a strange thing. You will wake up one morning and find that you
don’t want failure and your misery,
because this pattern of life has been built up over the years and you
cannot easily let go. Well, it is your
choice to win through. And if you succeed in the morning, and every morning,
you will achieve your victory.
2. Adopt a new physical attitude:
Lift yourself up to your full neight.
Breathe in deeply. Imagine all the oxygen going into your lungs and pouring new
life into your blood. Do you know that all defeated men and women breathe
shallowly? Deep breathing and wretchedness cannot live together for long. If
you have a habit of walking with nervous hurry, then deliberately pull yourself
up and walk more leisurely.
3. Get a fresh outlook on your job:
No job is unimportant. I heard a
mother saying that she was “fed up with just looking after little children”.
And yet this woman has one of the most responsible, vital and delicate jobs in
the world. Even the Prime Minister is not in a position of higher
responsibility to posterity than is the mother with the care of her children.
Think. Do not be a routiner. Devise
ways of doing things quicker and better Thinking on the job gave the world
triumpth over contagious diseases, painless surgery, the magic of X – rays and
countless other benefits. Every advance
in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination.
4. Build a philosophy of life that is big enough:
The more we retreat into the shell of
our hopelessness, the less we see and know of life.
What do you think about the mystery
of a rose petal, or a sunset, the marvel of sound vibration and light waves?
What do you make of the mystery of human love, of sex and of immortality? These
questions take us to ultimates, to God. And
why not? I for one cannot make sense of this universe without God. We
know that his nature is love. He loves you and me – which means that we are more important than we ever
dreamed.
He is doing something with us, with
every one of us. He is doing something important with you and me. If we’ll only let him. And
that thought brings new dignity to life. We are working out something on this
earthly plane of tremendous importance, and I for one welcome this adventure
with all my heart.
We are important!
