How to deal with ‘hurt’?
Now that is not easy! Yes
dealing with ‘hurt’ is not easy. You can deal with hurt by decimating the person
who has hurt you but very few of us are in that position and then there could
be disastrous consequences not only due to law and order machinery but psychologically
too. Some of us are tough and you may
feel that ‘hurt’ does not hurt them but that is not true. However here my discussion
is primarily regarding sensitive people who get hurt easily and for whom it is
a gigantic task to get over ‘hurt’s. I may add here that I am one of them and
would also like to add that I am no expert at getting over ‘hurt’s without
feeling hurt. Then why am I writing this? It is because I have lately been hurt
very had but at the same time have discovered some marvellous ways to get over ‘hurt’.
How did I do that? Did I meet someone who gave me a magic wand? Yes that is
partially true but mainly it is blessing of God that he gave me ‘nirmal mati’ as my Guru Ji used to say.
For those not native speakers of Hindi ‘nirmal
mati’ could translate as unblemished intelligence. Unblemished because it
is not affected by our biases and experiences of the past. That is what we have
to work on but it is not at all easy. Ironically the more intelligent one is
the more difficult it is to have ‘nirmal
mati’. Well that is a slight digression from the topic but remember ‘nirmal mati’ can solve a lot of your
problems.
Coming back to handing ‘hurt’
Well! Handling hurt requires a lot of unlearning basically. Most of what we
learn as we grow up is popular learning, it is not the ideal learning but since
that is the type of learning we will find everywhere we have come to believe it
to be the ‘ideal’ learning. Most of us are destined to die believing that to be
the ‘only’ learning unless you are lucky enough to meet great saints. The only
true knowledge is enshrined in our religious books; that is the knowledge unlikely
to change due to fashion or tradition and that knowledge comes free only
problem is that in coming to us that knowledge has been greatly corrupted due
to wrong interpretation. Interpreting ancient knowledge is the job of great
saints, unfortunately they are very hard
to come by. So you have to unlearn that ‘hurt’
really hurts you; it does but it shouldn’t.
I am sure you must have heard of that story about Buddha where someone
comes and spits on Buddha in public. Obviously Buddha did nothing about it and
did not react the way we would do. Christ never called out to people from the
cross and tell them to go take vengeance for his death neither did he call up
to the heavens and say ‘bring down your fury upon this land and decimate this
king and his kingdom’. I am sure very few of us were hurt by ‘hurts’ such big;
most of us have to deal with minor ‘hurt’s.
Talking about myself, I
was a man ready to kill for the smallest ‘hurt’ as a young man but now I look
back and analyse how I blundered, blundered because ‘nirmal mati’ did not come to me.
As I grew up I realized that God had visited the most fearsome vengeance
upon those who ‘hurt’ me and my loved ones. I shudder to tell you the details.
They were punished in the most awful way and for a couple of them I felt really
sorry and moved to tears at the plight of their family. Did God watch me
carefully and went out with vengeance to those who had ‘hurt’ me? I do not
think so. It was their ways which brought them to the sorry end they had. I
remember very well as a kid about the ‘hurt’ my grandfather had to go through.
He was the most respected gentlemen of
the locality. When he used to go out strolling almost everyone bowed to him. He
had a very big ego which I guess anyone in his place would have. One day a man
slapped him in public. My grandfather was deeply hurt and planned all kinds of
vengeance against the man but he was not up to the task and nothing happened.
It greatly upset my father too who though a very calm man was enraged by the
insult to his old father. A few years later the man in his thirties committed
suicide. It was not just what he did to my grandfather his ways were bad and he
was destined to come the bad end. I can narrate even more ghastly stories but
that is not necessary what we have to learn is that those who ‘hurt’ are
destined to be punished. It is automatic. It is like four plus four is eight.
So we have to stop hurting people ourselves first and then realize that God is
there, he is running the show and he has been running it from time immemorial.
The most beautiful lines from the Bible which always reassure me are “Dearly
beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto
wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay,
saith the Lord.”
You have to have some
faith in a power beyond you that makes things easier, even a cynic like Dale Carnegie has said that citing the
example of his parents whose faith in God kept them going even after their
crops were destroyed year after year.
It is not an easy thing
to do to cope with hate so I have evolved a method for it. I do not always do
it that way but it is pretty much the same flowchart. When I am really hurt by
someone against whom I have no power say for example my fathers’ customers I
just seal my lips and leave the venue as quickly as possible then I start doing
mantra jaap, I may add that for mantras
to be effective you need lots and lots of practice though if you are really
faithful it could work quickly for you too. After doing ‘mantra jaap’ I start
getting normal and ‘nirmal mati’
floods me with its comforting ideas. I start to realize that the man is on the
road to cardiac disease perhaps coupled with diabetes and later neurosis if he
loses his temper so quickly which is true and any doctor would vouch for that
though I have met a couple of villains who do not fit in with this. This
realization makes me understand how lucky I have been to fully understand the
implications of losing one’s temper, not that I do not lose my temper, I still
do but the episodes are decreasing in frequency dramatically.
Finally I pray to my ‘isht dev’ to deal with the person as he
deems fit. I have stopped asking him for vengeance because past history shows
that his vengeance is terrible. I do not ask him for vengeance anymore because
I fear I could be sinning myself that way. That does the trick most of the
times but when the ‘hurt’ is really bad it could take almost a couple of days.
Previously it used to take months I may add.
Another very important
thing is we have a lot of time on our hands to get ‘hurt’ that is the prime
culprit. If we have identified ourselves as being too sensitive we have to get
really busy. This is not my conclusion but that of a very highly paid and
decorated psychologist. He went on to add that being very busy was the panacea
to most psychiatric problems and a sure means to prevent them. He was treating
my aunt who used to imagine herself having a disease and used to actually have
that disease soon. She was a horrific case of neuroses. The psychologist was
too expensive for poor people like us so I used to listen carefully to whatever
knowledge he would give us gratis.
At the workplace
getting ‘hurt’ is going to increase in geometric proportions because pressure of work will increase
as India too is ensnared by corporate culture. Corporations do not want
employees to unite and they go out of their way to encourage animosity among
the employees so most of the young people have to steel themselves
psychologically. My brother could not do that as an employee of one of the
world’s most famous corporates and he had to quit. I do not blame him and to be
fair he learnt a lot at his workplace and travelled abroad free. He does not
regret leaving the job he had an alternative career ready but most of us cannot
do that.
Another very easy way
to steel yourself psychologically if you are a Hindu is to learn chanting from
an expert. You can even search for it online. Once you learn to chant properly
you will not need to read any books on steeling yourself against ‘hurt’. The
compassion will flow from inside you. You will feel compassion for the one who
has ‘hurt’ you and it will not feel like hurt at all because your ‘nirmal mati’ will shower upon you the
knowledge that will comfort you. Why the person ‘hurt’ you? Did you unconsciously
‘hurt’ the person first? Your animosity will evaporate in thin air and every
creature you meet will appear to you to be the son/daughter of God and thus someone
you must be compassionate about. That is sometimes difficult but once the right
frequency is found the resonance will cure you.
This is not an article
by an expert but by someone who has suffered ‘hurts’ from a family of very
sensitive people. I have stumbled upon some solutions that is all. Please feel
free to comment or criticize. Finally a word of caution – do not become a
punching bag for all people who want to ‘hurt’ you. You must if possible let
the person who hurt you know that you will not take insults but it must be
devoid of violence, that is the main thing to remember it must be a conscious protest
not compulsive. Avoid toxic people, not if you can but you must go out of your
way to avoid toxic people at any cost.
Cheers!