The WING that makes flying difficult

I call it WING - the 'World Is Not Good' view.

We often see people speaking or expressing their ideas through general talks, social media and so on. One category of such expressions is about self-pity, blame game and the 'World is not good' attitude.

Some forwarded messages, some people's talks and some stories (?) & status in social media go like this:

'Don't believe anyone; even your own shadow leaves you at night', 'Don't be kind. It costs you a lot', 'The world is good for those who are cunning. It is crooked for those who are kind', 'this world is not for me and I am not for this world' and so on.

These quotes and words are catchy. We somehow feel it is our feeling too. We connect ourselves with it. This happens just because our tricky mind always wants us to be in the good books. There's nothing wrong with it; but the danger starts when we start thinking that the 'World is not good', which is completely not true.

We find some strange happiness in thinking (or believing) that we are good but something bad happened to us; we did everything but we have still suffered; we are honest but we are still cheated. It may be true that you are good, you had done everything and you are honest. But the second parts of the above statements need a different approach to understand.

One: life does not operate on the 'give good and get good' formula. It may discourage us from doing good and falsify the 'karma' theory but that's the way we should understand it.

We should simply be good and do good even after knowing (or expecting) that something good may not come in return. The moment you do good and wait for the good things to return, if (or when) something adverse happens to you, you start blaming life that it did bad to you even after being good. That collapses your happiness.

At least if you could disconnect the bad that happened from the good you did, and think that both of them are independent phenomena, you could focus more on solving or handling the bad in a better way than blaming the world, life and feeling that the good things that you did went in vain. That discourages you from being and doing something good again. And the WhatsApp, Facebook status, forwarded messages and philosophies start to attract us.

Two: the more you focus on the bad things that happened to you, the more you lose the ability and focus to look at so many other good things that are available around you and the good people around you. Sometimes we suffer not fully because we have problems that happened to us, but simply because when we suffer we fail to look at the solutions and good things and people around us. Shifting of focus is difficult but it's important.

Three: When we are suffering, when we encounter a failure, when we feel cheated, when in pain or rejected, we seek reasons, not solutions. Well, that's not the time to find the reasons because self-pity is at work at that time. When you are already in pain, your mind does not want to make the situation still worse by telling the truth that you are (or you are also) the reason for your failure, suffering or rejection. It tries to boost your ego with a positive lie that you are all good; the mistake is by others. That's when the self-pity and blame game start. That's when the 'WING' starts developing and you fly in the wrong way.

Is it wrong to console ourselves even with such lies? Well, it just makes you believe there is no good in the world except you and that shuts the doors of hope and happiness.

Just give suffering, problem or rejection their own time to settle. Just recall all the good things that happened to you till now. Just remember all the good people who helped you, sowed hopes in you and stood by you in tough times. Let's not generalize that the 'World Is Not Good'.

Life's like operating a modern-day camera. There's a subject and there's a background. Tap on what you want to see clearly and what you want to appear blurry. Keep the people who cause pain in the background and make them blur. Your happiness should be your subject - keep it in the foreground - clear and sharp. One day when we get spaceships to Saturn and jets to Jupiter, we can go there blaming this word. Until then, just focus on the goodness and happiness around you in this world!