On an early morning, l was at my neighbour’s place in Mumbai to wish her daughter on her birthday. Looked like, the young girl was still basking in her blissful slumber. Then, the moment she tramped out of her bedroom, lo! My neighbour literally loped towards her to give a rib-crunching hug. After which she unleashed an avalanche of good wishes, wishing her the best of health, wealth, happiness, success, etc, etc.
Precisely, at that instant, my neighbour’s niece, who, coincidentally, shared the same birth date, dropped in with sweets. My neighbour, in a rather clinical tone, laconically said “Happy birthday beta”. The effervescence and effusiveness she exhibited earlier, while wishing her own child, was totally missing here when wishing her niece! Really, it made me wonder over this brazen discrimination. Yes, some of us are singularly calculative about spending even a single penny on others, but are we so calculative enough to even spend a jot of our time, energy, efforts, to spew out few good words? Often, we behold many folks, going overboard, being over-exuberant while wishing/blessing, congratulating/complimenting their own people at home, but when it comes to appreciating or acknowledging good in outsiders, suddenly they turn out all stingy and sparing!
Interestingly, the reason why the good words remain clogged in our throat itself, without spurting out of our mouth, is because the “heart”, which is just below the throat, doesn’t give that adequate nudge/thrust to those words, to get out of our mouth! If the heart wills, the words automatically get spouted out!
In fact, it is exactly like the ‘mechanism of the water pistol’. For the water (compare with our good words) to squirt out of the pistol’s snout (compare with human mouth), the thrust on the ‘pressing knob’ (compare with ‘human heart’), which is situated just behind the pistol-mouth, is necessary. More the thrust on the knob; more water squirts out! If the thrust is feeble, the outcome too is feeble. Similarly, the more our heart propels, the more are the good words, gushed out!
After all, we should remember, we don’t lose anything by being generous, at least, with our words (if not with our money!) Rather, we gain a lot – people’s goodwill, and maybe, even the divine blessings!