Wasting Life on an Unworthy Person?
PrashantAdvait Foundation
Questioner: I was in a relationship with a person from the last eight years. Last three years while being with me, he was also seeing and dating other women. I have always been honest and loyal to him. After knowing that he is so mean, so dishonest, why am I still not able to give up on him? Kindly give me some techniques on how to get over him, forget him, and ultimately disassociate myself from a person like him.
Acharya Prashant: You see if you are keeping a dog, you will probably have to go to the meat market. There is no option available to you as long as you keep the dog very close to your heart. It makes no sense to crib about the stink and the squealer and the chaos in the meat market because your presence there has not been forced by anybody else upon you. As long as you stick to the dog, you will have to stick to the meat market as well.
If you find that you are needlessly attracted to an unworthy person, then it is not that so-called mean person you need to distance yourself from, rather you need to investigate what is it within you that craves for meanness. You say you have been in a relationship with that person for eight years. If the person is really mean, what were you doing with that person for so long? Only meanness gets attracted to meanness.
You say you were very loyal to that person etc. What was so great about that person that you offered your loyalty to him? As far as I understand life a little, one's loyalties must be reserved for the highest one can come across. Or is one's loyalty a cheap thing, an article on sale that you can offer it to just about any random, average, mean person? I want to ask this question to all who either demand or profess loyalty from another person or towards another person.
Those who have known life have been taught fundamental wisdom that only Truth is worth being committed to. How do you afford to be committed to some person? Does that person really represent the Truth to you? Is he the apostle and the epitome? But with great moral righteousness, we come forward and say, "Look at me. Since the last twenty-five years, I have been unexceptionally committed and devoted and loyal to this person." You are bragging about your foolishness, nothing else. And don't feel offended, please. We all need to hear this.
The one who is committed to the Truth cannot be committed to anything or anybody else and that is the only right way to live life, to be committed only to the highest. Look at what you are committed to. Are you really committed to the highest? What is your concept of loyalty? What do you mean by loyalty? There is the loyalty of the material kind, which is nothing but barter, and trade. My employer pays me so much, so I must deliver him such and such services, or if I have committed so much in a business agreement then I must uphold my part of the commitment. This is nothing but a material transaction.
And then there is the inner loyalty. I understand if you are outwardly committed to somebody because that somebody is providing something material to you, that is part and parcel of the agreement. That is okay, but how do you get inwardly committed to somebody? How do you manage to say that you are committed to Rahul or Sheena or Raj or Farrukh? How? Who is this person you are committed to? And then when you receive a jolt like the questioner seems to have received, you come up and complain and cry, "Oh, I trusted this person so much and he ditched me." Why did you trust in the first place?
By offering your fidelity to just about any random person, first of all, you are guilty of infidelity. This is really blasphemy of the lowest kind. You make some Tom, Dick, Harry the center of your universe and, accordingly, you raise expectations from that person. Is that person, first of all, capable of and worthy of fulfilling your expectations? Obviously, he is not. He is just one general fellow like everybody else, an average human being. He will do what all average human beings do. And when his acts and transgressions come to light then you put up such a sorry face, "Oh see, my trust has not been honored."
You trust an elephant to fly and instead of flying it gives you five kilograms of elephant shit. You are looking upwards; soon it will be flying. The thing raises its tail. You feel it is a take-off signal, and soon all the ambrosia from the heavens descends upon you, and then you come running to Acharya Ji. But your darling was an elephant. What else could he have done?
What's worse? There is something within you that still pulls you to the elephant. What is even worse is that you not only are pulled towards the elephant, you still secretly hope that the elephant will fly. The elephant is not to be blamed. Blame that within you which gets attracted to all kinds of animals. Whenever you get cheated in love, don't blame anybody else. Ask yourself, did you not have anything better to do with your life that you went and clung to a person? Eight years of life! And if I recall, the questioner is a professor, right? Students, I am thinking of them.
Eight years of your life and golden years of your life. These are the years when you are in your youthful prime. You dedicated these years to some general moron who was having affairs all over the city. Only a few have been uncovered. I know him, he has five more. Five more in which he succeeded, 25 more in which he got beaten up. That's the way everyone is. I don't need to know particular personal details. That's the way each one of us is. Those are the ways of what we call as the common man. The general human being, I ask you, is he worth being devoted to? Then why do you pick some man, some woman, and put him on some high pedestal which he is not worthy of? Why do you do that? Why do you do that? You know the reasons, right? Some loneliness, some hormonal upsurge, some cultural predisposition, some peer pressure, some cultural norm, movies, a lot of movies. So we feel that it is very, very necessary to have the central spot in our life occupied by a person.
The movies tell us that unless there is a special person in your life, you are really missing out on something big and you are seized by FOMO. What is FOMO? Fear of missing out. "Oh my god! Everybody has that. I am the only one left behind. I must also have a partner, a girlfriend, a boyfriend, a husband, a wife, something. Hey, go grab somebody." So you go out and grab some Johnny next door. He was busy washing his sandals, and you went up to him and threw your most seductive smile and then he too was infected by FOMO. He said, "Now that I have the opportunity, why shouldn't I capitalize?" And thus, came about the relationship. And you call it a holy bond made in heaven. Why do we do that?
Eight years of life. Come on, think of it! Eight years of life you are spending behind some unworthy person. And let me assure you most people are just unworthy, so it's always better and always safer to not spend your life on people. If you have to invest your hours, your months, your years, invest them in a cause. The cause could be your own development, or general development, social welfare, whatever, but let it be a cause, not a person. Let the cause occupy you fully. Don't just become somebody's washbasin. He keeps spitting, and you keep collecting. And very soon you clean yourself up just to receive more of the same stuff. Applies to both men and women, applies to all people young and old, and especially applies to those who are gripped with loneliness and FOMO syndrome.
There can be nothing worse than being saddled with, being tied to, being chained to some general unworthy person in life. That's the worst hell you can create for yourself. Don't do that. If life is benevolent enough to offer you a great, great companion, nothing like it. But if you cannot have a great companion, live all by yourself. Your solitary existence is 200 times better than being coupled with a mischief-maker.
And remember, hurt comes from a broken expectation. You expect so much from the other basically because you have not internally achieved what you should have principally achieved for yourself all by yourself. You did not do what you should have done for yourself; therefore, you now expect somebody else to do good things for you. The responsibility to bring goodness to your life rests primarily upon you, not upon somebody else.
To bring somebody to life and then expect that somebody to bring richness and goodness to your life is not wise. As an adult, it is your own responsibility to fill up your life with beauty, wellness, with goodness. And if you are not doing it, why and how must someone else do it for you? But you expect that from the other person. The expectations will never be fulfilled, and you will be hurt. Why do you want to invite so much sorrow? It is a fallacy that some people is very necessary for your life. No, no. Something else is necessary for life.
Especially in today's world if you see, you do not need a person for physical survival or physical security. There is the economy, there are systems, and there is security. You don't need a male or a female to be around you for all those reasons. You can earn for yourself. There are all kinds of services available. You can have food, you can have medical care, you can have all these material things that you want. So it is obvious that a person cannot be your primary need. Your primary need is something else. Identify that and work hard to meet that.
If you do not fill your life with highness, with joy, with understanding, with beauty and purity, the result will be that you will be forced to fill up your life with some kind of rubbish. Often that rubbish is in the form of a person. Don't let that happen to you.
