The Importance of 'I'

When a child is born, he knows no relations. He is only concerned about his meals and his sleep. As he starts to grow up he is introduced to the relationships and then for most of us these relations become more important that even ourselves. God created only man and woman. It is us who gave a name to human interactions because of our need for companion. But the point right now or the questions in front of us are; whether we should keep relations ahead of ourselves? And whether we do justice to that relation by doing that? 

Now let me elaborate on these questions. There comes a time in everyone's life when a relationship becomes so important that in order to keep it alive we are willing to sacrifice everything and sometimes the effort is reciprocated and sometimes it doesn't. We need to ask ourselves if all this effort is worth the try? 

The answer is No. Because till the time I is not satisfied in a relationship it will never let We to evolve.

I believe that the concept of I has been lost to us. This I is not the same as one that is self centered,  cunning, self obsessed and self absorbed. This I instead is the one who thinks about achieving peace,  love, relaxation and care for everyone through Self. 

It can be argued that putting self before others is being selfish, but that where the difference lies. In order to explain this concept better let me quote the example of Gautam Buddha. Ask yourself a question did Gautam Buddha knew what true happiness was when he was Prince Siddhartha? The answer is No, because when he was a prince he never knew about any aspect of life which causes grief to us like death, disease, old age etc. Hence,  the life that he was living cannot be termed as happy as one cannot feel true happiness if he/she hasn't felt the opposite emotion. That is why when he decided to leave everything and forgo every relation in order to look/search for true happiness,  only then he could walk on the path of Nirvana. But the Nirvana of Gautam Buddha was not limited to himself because when he attained peace for himself and received answers for all his questions, he passed on every bit of knowledge to his devotees. Prince Siddhartha could never have achieved this. Now would you call Gautam Buddha selfish because he left his family to seek peace for himself?

Therefore, it becomes paramount for all of us to first look for and strive for our own peace of mind and once we have achieved that and found happiness inside, then it would become easy to deal with relations. Because at that point of time there is no fear of losing someone or loosing to someone because the biggest battle is already won i.e. the battle with your mind. Hence, everything else should take a back seat. Find the happiness in yourself before being the source for happiness for others. Learn to love yourself before loving others and pamper yourself before pampering others. Every knot will sort itself out.