Love does not give up; it has great energy and patience || Acharya Prashant, with youth (2013)

Questioner (Q): Sir, there are many things that we are taught in our HIDP classes that go against the societal norms, and following them would hurt a few people related to me but I want to follow them. How can I implement all these things in my life, without hurting the feeling of others?

Acharya Prashant (AP): First of all, let us observe that there are a few things that I might understand but that go against the grain of what certain others stand for. What I understand puts me in conflict with others. How many of us have experienced it?

(Some listeners raise their hands)

We know the other person only in our own context. Do we really understand the other person in his totality? You know the other person only as an image you have of him. Let me just say that it will be extremely ignorant of us to think that our parents will not understand these simple things that we understand.

There are many students who would come up and say this, "I have understood but my parents will not understand." Don’t you think that it is extremely arrogant of us to say that "I can understand but they can not understand and their feelings would be hurt"? What will happen to this HIDP program if I start thinking that your feelings will be hurt if I make activities on Ego, Personality, Freedom, Mind? I have complete trust in your intelligence and hence have made these activities.

I know that some of the statements, some of the situations would offend us. There would be hardly anybody who would have not been offended by something or the other that would have happened in the class. But then I also know that we all have something which is far greater than these feelings which hardly gets hurt. Our feelings are like a storm in a teacup, very easy to come, just a bit of wind, and the storm will come. Such are our feelings. Someone says, "You are an idiot" and you are hurt. Why? Someone says, "You are glorious" and you are elated. Why? Such are our feelings. But I know that you in totality are much more than your feelings. I know that you all have the capacity to understand. I have faith in your intelligence. Are you getting it? What makes you think that your friends, your family members, people you are related with, will not understand? What makes you think that they will not understand? Do you know what is love? Love means to bounce back and keep bouncing back. It means that if the other person does not understand I will try, I will try again, that is the action of real love. Have you done the activity ‘Love is not’? What does it say towards the end? That love is?