Motivational Ideas (Part 1)

1. Whenever we feel that life is getting tough, and that it’s difficult to resist sins, we can just think about the happiness we feel when we end our exams. We had to resist things like procrastination, playing, hanging around with friends, while we had to study hard. Likewise, imagine the happiness we will feel when all the things that we were prohibited will suddenly become accessible to us in paradise. So, this worldly time can be thought of as the time between the beginning and the end of our exam season. And if we were resisting sins and keeping ourselves solely dedicated to righteousness, then as soon as the exam session ends, we can imagine what happiness we can expect as a result of all our worldly efforts.

2. Instead of escaping situations which break our hearts or hurt us, we should be trying to face them courageously, for a hurt heart easily becomes humble and thus settles down. This allows us to reflect over our mistakes and improve in the future. Sometimes, setbacks are a way we grow, only if we use them to learn from our mistakes. Setbacks can also help us save us from a bigger setback in the future. Of course this does not mean that we seek out people who can break our heart or situations that can test us. It only means to be courageous when a difficulty befalls us.

3. Those people who have nothing to do, for them, time passes very slowly. But for those who are busy and engaged in different activities, for them times passes away really quickly. This is kind of a theory of relativity of time. Let us take a look at time from several perspectives.

It’s about how time passes. Those who waste time, little do they realize how time easily seeps away. To get an idea of how fast time goes, there are many levels of thinking about it.

If we start thinking about people who lived in the ancient times i.e. five thousand years ago etc., then we realize that they are all gone and tons of generations after them have also passed away. But then, if we think about the people a thousand years ago, they also lived like us and they too passed away. Coming closer, if we think about people in the 1700s and 1800s, they too were busy with their worldly lives but eventually, passed away. Then when we come to near history. People in the 20th century (which include our grandparents) too passed away and their time is over too.

This was about people who passed away. But now think about yourself. Do you remember the time you were young. It has all vanished away. Think about your teens, all gone. Similarly if you keep think about all the decades you’ve spent, all gone. Now zooming in on the time frame, think about how fast the last year went by. It seems like yesterday that the world was celebrating the beginning of this year, but tomorrow is the last day of this year. Zooming further in, think about how fast the last month went by, the last week. And then how fast does a day and night go by. You look at the clock and when you look the next time, you just lost several hours.

All the discussion so far shows how quickly we lose time. This puts an urgency on us to work on our priorities. However, there is a positive side to this race of time. And that is our pains. Time heals. We go through so many trials and tests. Every test seems never ending, but thinking about how previous generations came and went away comforts us that this life is temporary. Whenever we are in pain, feel sad, lose someone, feel jealous, feel negative towards someone, thinking about the fact that this life will eventually end and that no worldly pleasure nor worldly pain will last eases all the pain out.

And we have examples around us to remind us to remind of the reality and inevitability of death. One visit to the graveyard reminds us that the freedom that we have to walk around the earth and do whatever we want is going to end. We too will get arrested by a grave, unable to move a limb.