Читать книгу Triumph Of Love Over Ego - Saeed Habibzadeh - Страница 7

When I was a young boy, I constantly had a strange feeling that I could not describe. I felt that something wasn’t right with this world. But since the world of grown-ups was incomprehensible to me, I was unable to recognize what it was.

Later, I came to realize that this feeling was a longing for an ideal world, a longing that had been with me since childhood. I wanted a world like in a fairy tale, complete with happy endings. I always wondered what became of the fairy-tale characters, and whether they really did live happily ever after. I always wanted to know how it was that the world of grown-ups contained hardly any happy endings such as those in children’s books, and how come our world is not really as idyllic as the one in the bedtime stories that were read to us.

I closely observed my parents’ facial expressions and noticed that they were not really happy with each other or with their life. When they saw me anxiously watching them, they smiled like grown-ups do when intending to comfort a child. But as soon as they averted their eyes, their facial expressions changed and I could see how they really felt. I saw doubt, sorrow, worry and any number of problems that could not be solved.

I realized that there is a great deal of difference between the imaginary world of fairy tales and the real world.

Fairy tales only served to make us go to sleep easier and give us nice dreams. But the real world was a nightmare without happy endings. This made me very sad and often I secretly cried at night. I was especially and desolately sad when I witnessed the unhappiness and despair of my parents.

My mother and I had many conversations like this one:

 “Why does Papa go out early in the morning and doesn’t come back until late in

the evening?”

 “He goes to work.”

 “Why?”

 “Because he needs to earn money for all of us.”

 “Why?”

 “Well, we need money to buy food. Nobody gives you anything for nothing.”

 “Why not?”

…

Questions and answers like these take place in all families, questions that are always terminated with the statement that we are just little kids and can’t understand these things yet. But later, when we became adults, we still didn’t get answers to our questions. At some point we just stopped asking, stopped thinking about these things.

When we were little, we had fairy tales read to us because the real world offers little of beauty. These tales were meant to reassure us, to detract us from reality and make life bearable. As adults, and without even realizing it, we lose faith in what is good and instead chase after unattainable dreams. Children are comforted with fairy tales and grown-ups are lured, cheated and sucked dry with dreams.

Pondering all this, I never quite lost sight of one question: why do suffering, hunger, violence, lies, cheating, wars and other ugliness exist in this world?

Why is everybody so unhappy?

I have never been able to let go of these questions. How could I possibly forget them, when this world reminds me of them every single day?

My observations always brought me to the same conclusion: we suffer because we act selfishly and so make life difficult for one another.

Our ego has created a great many misunderstandings and errors of thinking that turn our lives into a living hell. Often, these are handed on to us by other people, previous generations, our friends and teachers, and we just accept them at face value without bothering to question their validity.

In this book, I uncover and clarify some of the machinations of our ego. It would be great if it could contribute to making this world a more beautiful, more peaceful and happier place. However, this can only work if we all straighten ourselves out in whatever way we can.

Sincere readers will identify many errors of thinking and false assumptions within themselves and their fellow humans. This is the first step towards personal, collective and global happiness.

What we don’t recognize, we cannot comprehend. And what we don’t comprehend, we cannot improve!

If you let go of your own ego, step by step, you make an important part of our world more beautiful, more harmonious and more peaceful: yourself.

Whether we are aware of it or not, whether we believe in it or not, we all carry the same responsibility, namely to leave a better world for our children than the one we inherited from our parents.

The more people act accordingly and treat each other with love, respect, appreciation and a spirit of co-operation, the better our world will become.

And that is what we all wish for, isn’t it? A world where we don’t need to tell our children fairy tales to distract and reassure them. A world where the adults don’t have to make do with dreams-for-sale, but are able to attain a fulfilling and happy life.

If it is our wish to live in such a world, and especially if we want to be able to leave such a world for our children, we must be prepared to live and fight for what is good, true and beautiful. A fight against the personal, collective and global ego. Only if it is fought from a position of true and selfless love, can this fight ever lead to triumph:

The Triumph of Love Over Ego!

Saeed