Welcome the coming New Year with a resolution. Resolve to do something excellent, something very good. Resolve to be of use to others. Resolve to be happy and spread happiness, because that is important.
You know, you cannot be unhappy without a reason, but you can be happy without any reason. This is the wisdom that we must bear in mind, 'I can be happy without any reason!'
If I am unhappy I will search for the reason, why am I unhappy. You have to do it, nobody else can do it for you. This is when you find that your unhappiness is due to physical dependency, or emotional dependency; or physical want or emotional want.
It is your physical and emotional wants that make you unhappy.
First we need to know how to handle the emotional wants. What are emotional wants? Appreciation from people. Let others appreciate me, let others praise me; adoration, and appreciation. Then the inability to handle the altercations of others. These are the emotional needs.
Also, thinking, 'Oh I am so good, I always think good about everybody, but everyone thinks bad about me'. This is the sort of emotional mess that we create for ourselves. We only create this, nobody else creates it for us.
Knowledge and meditation is the way to get out of this. Knowledge and meditation helps you to overcome the emotional dependency. When you have overcome that, then physical dependency has its own parameters.
Work hard, have confidence in your talents and abilities, and then reduce your wants and desires. If your wants and desires are high up there, and your physical ability is low, then you will be unhappy. See that your wants and desires match your physical ability.
Suppose you don't have hard teeth and you want to crack the shell of a walnut using your teeth, I tell you, the shell will not crack but your teeth will definitely crack. So you must first see how strong your teeth are, accordingly you should choose. If my physical ability is only to lift 15 kilos, I should not venture to lift 50 kilos. I should limit myself to 15 kilos, and then slowly rise up to lift more by working towards it.
So, you should look into your physical ability, and then your desire should match with it. If there is a mismatch between your desire and your capability, then you will be unhappy.
Suppose you are a heart patient and you want to venture climbing Mount Everest, what can I say to you? I would say, write Mount Everest on top of your staircase and climb. Just climbing the second floor will be like climbing Mount Everest for you.
So, you need to match your desires to your abilities. Somewhere you need to let go, and somewhere you need to hold on. Hold on to faith, and let go of cravings. If you let go of cravings, you will be happy. Hold on to the faith that only good will happen to you. 'Only good things can happen to me. If something unpleasant is happening to me, it is because nature wants to make me strong'. Have this faith in you.
If something bad happens, you should think it is just an accident. You should not think that it happened because I deserved it, no! 'If bad things happen to me, it is only an accident; but good things are bound to happen to me'. This will give you confidence.
So, taking these few pearls of wisdom and treasuring it is essential to make life a celebration. These are the decorations for celebrating life.
