Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Stop Living the Lives of Others!

When you watch someone crying, you also feel like crying. Even if you don't know why that person cries, the very sight of someone crying makes you feel the same way. Even if you see someone crying in a movie or a TV serial, you feel like crying. Why? A feeling is contagious. What if you see someone laughing? You feel laughing too. What if you see someone getting angry? You feel angry too. You happen to watch a sexy scene in a movie, and you feel sexy too. In short, all feelings are contagious. You see someone, and his/her feeling gets transferred to you. It is so simple as that. Every single day you see a lot of people in real life as well as through visual media. The moment you see each of them, your mind shares his/her feelings. Thus each and every day, your mind shares and carries the feelings of a lot of people in varying degrees.

This is how the human mind works, and we can't stop the mind from doing this. Actually there is no need to stop the mind from doing this. This is an amazing ability of the human mind. But the problem lies elsewhere. Along with the feelings of all the people you see, your mind also has your own feelings. Are you able to distinguish between your own feelings from the feelings of others? A lot of people are not able to do so. They often mistake the feelings of others as their own feelings.

Feelings are very important because your words and deeds are firmly based on your feelings. Your life is based on how you feel. If you can't differentiate your own feelings from those of others, you mistake their feelings to be your own, and your life will be based on their feelings. Instead of living your life based on your own feelings, you will live the life of others based on their feelings.

This is true not only about your feelings, but also about your mood, attitudes, and thoughts. All these are contagious. The people you see in your everyday life transfer their mood, attitudes and thoughts to you. If you cannot distinguish your own mood, attitudes and thoughts from those of others, you will be terribly confused, and you will have no control over your life. You will be living the life of others based on their thoughts and feelings and attitudes.   

So how do we solve this problem? We need to consciously learn to gain some control over our mind so that we can differentiate our own feelings, thoughts, attitudes and mood from those of others. This is the one basic skill that all people need to learn in order to live their life. The importance of learning this skill has been recognized in almost all the human civilizations. It occurs in almost all traditional cultures and communities though it is known in different names such as meditation, yoga, and prayer.

Traditional Christianity suggests prayer every three hours, that is seven times a day. Islam suggests prayer five times a day. Hinduism suggests prayer at least two times-- morning and evening. These religions have realized the importance of keeping the mind in control so that we can have our own thoughts and feelings, and our own life.

I am not suggesting that we need to blindly follow our traditional religions. All I am suggesting here is that we need to learn to keep our mind in control so that we may live our own life rather than the lives of others.

Read an article here on how to gain control over our mind.
 

1 comment:

Cherian said...

I read the Article.Thanks for the thought. It's simply simple.
Please continue to enlighten us with more such thoughts.

Cherian, Bengaluru