Vow of Life: Feeling for Others

During my recent visit to home, I felt the peace and caring atmosphere around me and thought that what would be a life when we stop caring the people around ourselves. We cannot be strong whole and always sustain our emotion and feelings. Now we are in the world of less caring atmosphere around us, One of the hardest challenges within the gamut of spiritual growth is to try to sincerely feel the pain of others. It is difficult to put ourselves in someone else's place and experience their hurting. There's no question that when someone undergoes suffering of his own, he finds it easier to feel another person's pain.

The reason why we find feeling other people's suffering so difficult is because we inescapably live much of our lives in a self-centered manner. We begin life as infants with no concept of anyone else but ourselves. Babies cry when they're hungry or when they have a dirty diaper without any perception that they are waking up their parents at 3AM. As we grow into childhood, we discover slowly that there are other people in the world and that we must get along with them. But we mainly 'share our toys' not because we care about the pain of other kids, but because we either want them to share their toys with us or because we're forced to.

As we develop and mature, we realize more and more that other people are truly important and need to be respected for their own existence. It is very hard to rip ourselves away from our self-absorption and it usually takes a lifetime of spiritual advancement to accomplish it. Sensitivity for others, loving your friends and neighbors is what the entire life is all about. The goal of life is to break free from the self-serving and selfish attitude with which we are born, and to step into the thoughts and feelings of those around us, including God.

Now that we have discovered the source of the difficulty for feeling other people's pain, our self-absorption, we are ready to move forward and work on improving ourselves. We need to step away from dealing only with our concerns and start putting ourselves in the mindset of others. We need to see their needs, worries, and pain. We need to become good listeners, and offer comforting and encouraging words. We can't always do anything tangible to solve the problem, but the fact that my friend knows that I share the ache of his burdens helps him tremendously. He knows that he doesn't face his problems alone. This is what we must strive for. We should live each day with an awareness of the burden of others and do what we can to alleviate their pain.

Written By: Sanwal Malik