WAS HE MY ENEMY?
“Find
the sweetness in your own heart,
then you
may find the sweetness in every heart.”
- Rumi
Our enemy is the creation
of our own insecure mind. We perceive someone as our ‘enemy’… because, we are
not confident of ourselves… We are insecure. Moreover, an enemy takes birth in our
mind, when we fail to see our own goodness and the goodness of another soul – including
our so-called ‘enemy’.
Deep hatred towards another person, therefore, is nothing but a deep
hatred towards our own selves. Yes, ironical – and unbelievable – it may sound!
Learning to love ourselves - by recognizing and accepting all our human
flaws – is the most crucial step towards learning to love others. We all are ‘flawed’
people on this planet… The flaws that we see in others are the flaws that we
have to see in ourselves. Kabir described it beautifully: “The river that flows
in you flows in me, too.”
How true! Humanity is this river… The only religion… The only ‘dharma’!
12-year-old Neeraj Behere wrote the following story for our new book – ‘I
am Good, The World is Good’… ‘Jaisi
Drishti, Waisi Srishti’.
Hope, it will help us to clear the mist of enmity and see where it all
comes from…
WAS HE MY ENEMY?
- Neeraj Behere (12)
Do you think the
world is good?" Yes, I think it is.
Being a good person is important in life. If you're a good person and
spread happiness, good things will come back to you… That’s my belief.
Sometimes, bad things happen to very good people, and, sometimes, good
things happen to bad people. But, that’s only ‘sometimes’. Most of the times,
if you try to do good things, good things come back to us. The same thing
happened with me in school, once.
I studied in Sherman Gangadhar Govind Patwardhan English Medium School,
in Ratnagiri. Once, there was a competition in my school of running race. Our
teacher had divided the students into two teams. I was in Shail's team; he was
my good friend.
On the other side, there was a boy in our team named
Farzad; he was my enemy and I, seriously, hated him. Farzad was my enemy;
because, I thought he was a Muslim. He, also, used to take my
stationary and never return it. He had, also, stolen my expensive pens.
So, I began to hate him for all these reasons. I was unhappy that Farzad
was in our team.
During the competition, we both – Farzad and I - were running; and he
was behind me. All of a sudden, I fell down… Farzad, immediately, helped
me to get up. He did not even think
twice about it… He left his running track and came to help. I was bleeding… So,
he informed the teacher about it, and, then, the teacher informed
my parents.
During all this, I was left with mixed feelings about Farzad: Was he my enemy? Was he a bad person? Then,
why did I hate him?
So, from this episode, I learnt, that the world looks good if I am able
to see it with my own clean eyes!
GERALD D’CUNHA
Pic.: Rekha Srikar Shenoy
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