There was a man, who lived for his family, he worked hard every day, enduring hardship under burning sun. For a long time, he never enjoyed what he produced, he shared the fruit of his best effort to his family. There is no other thing in his mind but his family welfare and safety.
One day he got sick and unable to provide for a while for his family. His wife started to complain of lacking food and money, and hang out with her friends, his kids started to nag him about toys and entertainments. Not even a word of sympathy he heard while he enduring the pain of his sickness. He felt betrayed by his family, everyone seems trying to find their own happiness, and taken his efforts for granted.
He began questioning the benefits of his efforts, there was no benefit for him work that hard for his family. Felt betrayed, he started to think to find his own happiness, however, he also thought that if he neglected his works, the family will break apart, and everyone will be suffered. The idea of making them suffered crossed his mind several times. Revenge, seems so sweet.
The only one which hold him back was his understanding of reality. He once met a monk, who taught him a way to contemplate about death. He learned from his contemplation that death, is not that scary, its just changes, from being alive, to be nothing more than a piece of soil in the end. We tended to hang on to things that we think giving us pleasure and happiness forgetting that everything will come to end. We also tended to think that bad things will linger forever and will not change, though things did change.
Everything will pass, lingering to the past glory won’t help either with worrying about what may come. What the monk said about how things changes overtime, still reverberating in his mind, everything had its time to be good and bad, his family may not supported him at the moment, but their existence also bring him joy and purposeful life.
They seek their own happiness, maybe its time for him to seek his own happiness. He sighed, maybe its time to think about his own need, giving himself a space. Maybe he thinks too much for his family out of feeling of responsibility. It also probable that fulflling his obligations also give him sort of happiness.
“I should do things at the best of my ability, if everything goes wrong, then there is nothing i can do. I think it is never about others, its about what i feel, I support my family because i like it, if my family feel its not enough, then maybe its not my problem. they need to figure out of the solutions by themselves. If they neglect and reject me, then its their problem not mine”
With such thinking, he begun to find his motivation again, its never about others….. its always about our own happiness. There is no need to feel angry or depressed, it just a choice to make. I do it because i happy to do it, if not enough, then so be it.