You don’t know how to live.
Naturally, in life, each person gains strength and performs at different times. Not everyone was born after exactly 9 months. One person was born after eight months, another after eight months and 15 days; each person was born at a different time. Everyone didn’t grow up in the same way. No two people’s situations are the same. There might be people in villages who dropped out of school in the fifth grade due to their poor financial situation. Others drop out in tenth grade or intermediate. Some complete their degree and find some kind of job. Each person starts earning money at a different stage. When you start earning money, that’s when you’re considered to know how to live. You should be earning money, but you’re not. You should be getting good marks, but you’re not. You lack worldly wisdom. What is worldly wisdom? It means talking to relatives and others, cracking jokes with them. People call it worldly wisdom when you flatter them, tell them gossip, and gain benefits from them. People who don’t know all this are told that they don’t know how to live.
You are talking back to your family and relatives.You are not living the way I told you to. They threaten you by saying you don’t know how to live.
Then you might feel inferior, thinking, “Oh no, if I don’t listen to what they say, I might not be able to survive,” and there’s a chance you’ll end up listening to them. Everyone—parents, relatives, teachers—keeps threatening you by saying you don’t know how to live. In this societal context, living means speaking one way to one person and another way to someone else, telling lies and deceiving people. Actually, that’s not living; it’s cheating. In reality, they are the ones who don’t know how to live; that’s why they adapt to every situation and sing a different tune for everyone. They think they are being clever by using flattery and speaking differently to different people. There is no one unintelligent in this society.
Those who display such cunning are the truly unintelligent ones.
They say you don’t know how to live because you can’t speak one way to the teacher and another way to your mother. You don’t know how to dig pits behind people’s backs. You speak straightforwardly. I feel like I can’t survive in this society. I’m becoming the odd one out.Ignore what your relatives say.
If you think logically, if we are useful to society, society itself will protect us. Put aside what they said or what others said. They say those things because they want to benefit themselves. Those are selfish words spoken by relatives because you are not benefiting them. If you try to please them, you will never be able to please them; your entire life won’t be enough.
Do as much work as you can. Do you want to go for a walk? Go ahead. Do you want to eat protein food? Go ahead. Learn skills constructively, and if you keep working and society needs you, society will never abandon you.
People keep saying that you should respect your parents. If you go for a job interview and say that you respect your parents, will they select you? No, right? Many people, unknowingly, and some intentionally, push you into an inferiority complex. No matter what you do, society will keep commenting on you.
If you change your behaviour because society commented on you, that would be wrong. That’s not how you should look at it. You should consider whether it is useful to society or not. How do you figure this out? You have to think about whether you would avail yourself of this service if you were in the other person’s place.
