फ़िराक़ पर दैनिक जागरण 3/3/20

NOW I KNOW BETTER- Does love diminish when you love more people? Are prayers wasted when they are for others?

NOW I KNOW BETTER - OZONE- TIMESLIFE
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/O-zone/now-i-know-better/

Does love diminish when you love more people? Are prayers wasted when they are for others? Is there a limit to the amount of work you can do?

I used to think that love gets diminished when you start loving more people – that we have only a limited amount of the emotion, which we should be very careful in dispensing. I would worry about divided loyalties and being fair to all those you love. Often, I wondered about women who had multiple children and how little love each child must be getting!

Now I know better. I know for sure that love expands to include more. The more you love, the bigger your heart’s capacity for the emotion becomes. That was a very interesting lesson learnt. The greatest epiphany was when I had my second child. Worried about being equally loving and caring to my second offspring, I soon realized that love just flows endlessly from some infinite source that we are unaware of till we tap it.

I was reminded of my childhood doubts while watching ‘Anne with an E’ when Miss Stacy tells her besotted student Anne, “Love is not quantifiable and therefore not finite. If you love another, it has no impact on your love for the first… But love is not indestructible… If love is not cherished and nurtured, it can indeed be lost.”

How true! Love does not hang around indefinitely waiting for nourishment. Love needs to know that it is cherished, welcomed and appreciated. Love demands love, and in the absence of appreciation, dwindles, shrivels and may even fade away, becoming a distant memory. Loving others and being loved back gives us an unparalleled sense of well-being and a rare confidence. We all cherish those who love us because of how they make us feel. If love demands love, it begets love in equal measure too.

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I used to think that there must be a limit to the number of prayers that get answered. I would worry that praying for another would use up my own quota, and would marvel at those who said, ‘I will pray for you,’ secretly deciding that they would never do so! I knew the thought seemed deformed and somewhat unnatural seeing that praying and spirituality are all about the oneness of the Universe and the free flow of love and prayers. And yet, I worried…

Now I know better. The more you pray the more you are blessed. And when you pray selflessly for others, you are blessed many times over. It is a Christian duty to pray for one another; Muslims love each other and pray for the love of Allah. Hindu prayers require sincerity and purity of thought and intention, and a prayer that is selfless and meant for the welfare of the world and others is even better. Priests pray to the Gods on behalf of devotees. In our scriptures, even Hindu Gods pray to each other for the welfare of the world and people.
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I used to think that there is a limit to the amount of work you can do. That work is dependent on the number of hours in the day and the amount of energy you have. I would worry when too many things piled up and, in that anxiety, end up not able to achieve half that I would have done with a cool mind.

Now I know better. The amount of work that can be achieved is all a matter of organization and being able to distance yourself from the little tasks in order to gear yourself towards the ones that require immediate attention. Multi-tasking for me is taking on several tasks, but focusing on them one at a time. It is about being able to train and delegate, about trusting and allowing others to grow too… And then you can take on as much work as you like, and stretch time beyond limit.

There is no limit to the amount of love, prayer, forgiveness and work that you can achieve in life. Life and experience teach us to let go a little in order to gain a lot, become selfless in order to gain something for your own self. What you let go with good intention and sincerity, comes back to bless you several times over. And that is true liberation of the soul….