It doesn’t feel nice to see so
many unsatisfied people these days. Longing for money, popularity or a
successful career, more and more people are unhappy. People forget that life
has to be lived with compromise and all we wish may not come true. Hapiness
comes from accepting these facts and still going forward with a smile in the
face. It is not hard to have a happy life but it is also not easy. Accepting
onceself, service to others, and selflessness are the three key things you got
to follow strictly. We are beautiful as we are and unique in our own way
however we might look like. Service to others in whatever we can should always
be the first priority in our life. What we are today is because of other
people, not because of ourselves. They are the ones who made us who we are
today, so it should be our responsibility to give back to the society and
people. Selflessness is the key for inner satisfaction. It requires immense
amount of love, respect and sympathy and love remains above everything and is
most powerful thing in our life that is capable to make anything we wish
possible.
Noone was born with hate. Hate is
what people were forcibly installed by some. So, if we think that there is some
portion of hate in us, inorder to lead a peaceful life, we need to unlearn this,
which is twice as difficult as to learn. Large portion of life will be used to
unlearn things if we want to free ourselves from the toxic thoughts we already
possess.
With love and mutual respect you
will have more inner peace, you will feel happier, feel better and inner peace
and hapiness is also one of the major factors that enhance our immune system
and help us to be protective from diseases.
Mutual respect comes from
respecting each other. No matter who you are, Hindu or Buddhist, Muslim or
Christian, Banker or Teacher, Communist or Capitalist, there is a human side in
everybody. Everybody has a family, friends or children whom they love. A key to
have a peaceful heart is to treat everybody as your own family member, by being
selfless.
The most incredible people I know
always took the side of love even though their circumstances were lot more
different and difficult than mine. For their deeds, they have been able to
change a lot in people’s lives. They were explorers, travellers, or even a
normal people like everybody of us who have seen the world and universal
suffering. This has led them to raise their voice, to make a world a better
place for everybody. These people possesed important characters like respect,
understanding, forgiveness, selflessness, love and most importantly, service to
others.
These people are for example: George
Harrison, John Lennon, Albert Schweitzer, Martin Luther King Junior, Alexander
von Humboldt, J.F Kennedy, Mahatma Gandhi, Albert Einstein, Nelson Mandela and
many others who refused to give up and fought for the righteousness and service
to others. From the past, not only such
heroic individuals, even many institutions are contributing for the better
world.
Nelson Mandela was 27 years in
Prison. He decided to forgive those who sent him to jail. Is there anything
that can be more courageous than this? Learning forgiveness is hard, it takes
time and lots of practice but it is possible. Dalai Lama still chooses the path
of non-violence even though thousands of Tibetan people are massacared every
year for no reason. He still proudly campaigns as an ambassador of peace. The
power of peace and non-violence was already displayed by Mahatma Gandhi who
kneeled down the most powerful empire where the sun never set. Albert
Schweitzer, Martin Luther King or John Kennedy are the symbol of
selflessness who sticked to the service to others in a hope to create a better
world. While doing that, many of them have paid their vision from their life,
everything for other people, for us. Kennedy, John Lennon, Dr. Martin Luther
King, Gandhi, Yitzak Rabin all were shot, they were murdered. Many such good
people were murdered. This shows that in our society hate is still present but
this is not the reason to stop fighting for peace and love. Rather, it shows us
the nessesity to fight even more so that one day we can eradicate hate
completely. For that we need such heroes and many other organisations that are
performing extraordinary tasks everyday in all the corners of our world.
International Committee of Red
Cross (founded by Henry Dunant in Switzerland), gives hopes to the hopeless
people in the warzones who just lost their loved ones, and all belongings. Showing
the human sides of life, the volunteers of Red Cross have risked their life in
places where noone wants to go to help the people disregarding their political
view, their country and skin colour. Henry Dunant got the first Nobel Peace
Prize in 1901 as a founder of ICRC. Again, International committee of Red Cross
won the Nobel Prize in Peace in 1917, and again in 1944 ‘for the great work it
has performed during the war in behalf of humanity’, and again in 1963 ‘for the
protection of human rights’.
United Nations High Comissioner
for Refugees also deserves the highest respect. It was handled the Nobel Peace
Prize in 1954 and 1981 for its extra-ordinary efforts by helping the refugees
in the warzones by bringing them to safety, giving them a new home and a
perspective of a good life. Especially, the most vulnerables in any war are the
innocent childrens. Helping these powerless children, the United Nations
International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) got peace prize in 1965 and
still continues to serve for the sake of humanity.
Being peaceful and non-violent
also saves cost. Our world has a Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of 70 trillion
dollars. 2 trillion dollars per year are spent worldwide as military
expenditures (1). 2 trillion means 2000 billions. 2000 billion dollars means
the combined GDP of 130 countries of the world starting from the bottom. This
money is huge. With this money, we can easily fulfill the Millenium Development
Goals. We can feed the hungry and provide free education for the needy. It is
surely not possible to cut all military expenses at once but it is possible to
reduce it massively if there is more peace and love in the world. Then it will
automatically reduce security expenses and the amount we save there we can
invest in our real problems namely poverty, climate change, global health and
education. The first step for this is love.
We can justify this argument with
some other figures, the most peaceful countries in the world, presented by
Global Peace Index (GPI), are lead by: Iceland, Denmark, New Zealand, Canada
and Austria. Security Spending of Denmark was 1.3% of GDP, Canada’s was 1.1% of
GDP, Finland’s was 2% of GDP, and Iceland has no military. Whereas, countries
with internal conflicts or that has a repressive governments have higher
percentage of GDP spendings on security, for example: Bahrain spends 4.5% of
its GDP for security, Equatorial Guinea spends 6.3%, Yemen spends 6.6%, Syria
spends 5.9%, Oman spends 11.4%, Qatar spends 10% and Saudi Arabia also spends
10% (2). Please note that I havent taken countries that have higher military
expenses due to particular conflicts that are dependent on neighbouring
countries or long term conflicts for example Israel, Greece or Cyprus. These
figures show us that love also saves costs. Peaceful countries are spending
less money for security purposes whereas not so peaceful countries are spending
heavy amount for security purposes. They could rather invest in other sectors
which will profit all people if there is an absence of hate and repressions
Hence, it is necessary to abolish
hate from our society. It is too destructive and too costly. Hate destroys us
all. It will seed you a dangerous ingredient in you which will appear to be a
terrifying suicide attack in your career. Your mission should be to be the best
version of you by your service towards other people by keeping other people’s
interest in mind and by always reminding yourselves that we also have a moral
responsibility to take care of innocent creatures that share this world with us
and our planet earth that gave us home and food to live. We have to follow the
principles of great people who gave up their live for the good causes.
The world visioned by these
visionaries are the optimal world to live in, they have made the world a better
place to live, with their work and vision. We have a proof today that love is
in fact the most powerful weapon in every aspect of life. And most of these
wonderful people and institutions were thanked by the sacred gift called The
Nobel Peace Prize. Be it Dalai Lama for his ‘non-violent struggle for the
liberation of Tibet’, be it the United Nations for its ‘more peaceful world’,
be it Muhammad Yunus for his ‘social and economic opportunities for the poor’,
be it Medicins Sans Frontieres (Switzerland) for its ‘pioneering humanitarian
works on several continents’, be it the United Nations Peace Keeping Forces for
their effort to reduce conflicts, be it Mother Teresa for her missionary
charity, be it Amnesty International for ‘protecting the human rights of
prisoners of conscience’, be it Martin Luther King Junior for his ‘peaceful
civil rights movement’, be it Carl von Ossietzky ‘for his struggle against
Germany’s rearmament, be it Jimmy Carter ‘for his effort to find peaceful
solutions to international conflicts’ or be it the group called International
Physicians for the prevention of nuclear war for their ‘awareness programs for
the catastrophic consequences of atomic warfare’. All the efforts done by these
extra-ordinary people were for love, for peace and the goodness of our society
in order to make a better world. Their vision has indeed made our world better.
It would not have been possible without the ingredient of love. Hence, love is
the most important of all, the most powerful of all that makes everything
possible.
Our struggle for daily life may
not always let us keep love in our mind, neither the struggle for limited
resources in the world where every individual is running to be the best, to be
the top and to earn the most. It may not simply be possible to live with love.
But it is all wrong, it is possible. Peace and Love beings in personal level,
It beings with you. You have to force yourself so that love still remains in
your mind. The neighbour might be too loud and disturbs you, still love him.
Your friend might have excluded you from the birthday party invitation. You
still invite him to yours and appreciate him. There might be too many
immigrants in your country, still give them a feeling that they are important
and treat them with respect and love. Force yourself to love in the beginning,
then slowely it will be your habit. Remember how hard it was to wake up in the
morning for school, college or work, but you forced yourself and now it’s your
habit and you realise now how easy it is. It is same for love. Loving unconditionally
brings peace to your mind and you will be happier. Even though others hate you,
do not hate them back. Buddha once said, ‘Hate can never be ended by hate,
rather by love’. So, especially those who hate you, you got to love more. It might
not lie within your comfort zone but you have to go beyond your comfort zone.
Try this and remember how the great people I mentioned above did this. If J.F
Kennedy could forgive the Russians and start a dialog with them in much more
complicated situation than today by saying “Our problems are man-made,
therefore they may be solved by man. No problem of human destiny is beyond
human beings”, If Nelson Mandela could forgive the people who sent him to
prison for 27 years, if Dalai Lama could forgive the people who kept him 54
years out of the homeland, you can surely forgive your enemies by the thing
called love. In your life, if you have a choice between love and hate, always
take the side of love.
_____________________________________________________
Sources:
(1)
- http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/spending.htm
Retrieved on 16th March, 2013
(2)
Global Peace Index 2012 , Retrieved 16th
March, 2013 .
(3)
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/spending.htm
Retrieved on 16th March, 2013
