Day 560 – I had to prepare a talk yesterday about the Baha’i faith for our TD class, so I did some reading on the internet to understand a little and I came across this very interesting writing of Bahaulla, the man who established the faith the way it is today. He said "Be generous in prosperity, and thankful in adversity. Be worthy of the trust of thy neighbor, and look upon him with a bright and friendly face. Be a treasure to the poor, an admonisher to the rich, an answerer to the cry of the needy, a preserver of the sanctity of thy pledge. Be fair in thy judgment, and guarded in thy speech." I liked it so much that I posted on my Facebook and a whole discussion started about the meaning of it. So I decided to write about the first sentence. I told my friend that this is how I try to lead my life. It does not mean "what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger" as one of my friends suggested, but instead it means be level headed. Don’t think that success makes you bigger than life and trials make you so small and unimportant. We are worthy no matter what and we should never forget that. We also should never forget who we are and where we came from if we are prospering; too many people do. We should be generous when we are doing well, generous with money but also with help to people that are at trial times at that point. The fact that we are well should be something to humble us and not to make us cocky; it should make us thankful for our good fortunes and open our purses and our hearts. And adversities will come, no one is spared. At one point or another we will meet challenges and trials; we will have problems that will try to pull us down. And at those moments we have to remember our good times and be thankful for them, remember that bad times are part of the cycle, and at the end of the day, bad times and challenges are the building blocks to who we are. Bad times bring out our true powers, our internal strength, our determination to overcome setbacks, but we have to do it gracefully, we have to accept them for what they are – patches of bad time – and we should not let them turn us into hard and callous people, we have to be able to accept it and keep a vibrating and soft heart. In the past few years I finally understood these beautiful verses, without being a Baha’i, just by getting older and with eyes and heart that are more open, because I too, like every one else had to go through challenges and find my peace. I try to be thankful for every day of my life, for anything that happens there, regardless if it’s good or bad, it is life, my life, and I will live it the best I can and be thankful for whatever is the roll of the dice.
I am thankful for the amazing class of TD I just finished; it brought so much goodness into my life. I am thankful I came upon this phrase and because of my friend’s comments had the opportunity to think about it even further. I am thankful for my age and experiences; I think I am a better person today for going through them all. I am thankful for my days of prosperity, for days of adversity and for days with nothing special to write home about; these up and down movements are the real pulses of life, and that’s what keep them full of potential, what make them the way they are; I would not want it any other way. I am thankful to be able to think, to love and to be hurt - to be so alive!!
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