To locate faults in others is easy; that is a consistent fault in us. Sometimes, we build up this habit into a towering practice and never get out of it. The tale goes on to collect more titles. Before analyzing our own mistakes, we begin to look around to blame others for our own failures. The dangers of this kind of an attitude are innumerable; it is like gathering milestones of ignorance around our necks, as we go along. This way, one after the other, our goals start to falter, and because we have lost the power of self-analysis, we turn our lives into disaster zones. The core formula to progress is to judge our own actions first, before we judge others.
A host of advantages appear when we carefully see our own performance with a critical eye. The test of realizing our dreams is when we take the responsibility of our dreams upon ourselves. Besides other ingredients, self-discipline, patience, diligence, a sense of openness, a will to sacrifice and an overall ability to deal with the given situation with fortitude is required. “My marriage failed, because I didn’t get any freedom. Besides, I was terribly insecure for myself and my children, and where we moved, this city was almost horrible,” quips a young woman. In the meantime she severs all her immediate relationships, forgets the good times she had enjoyed, closes all doors to advice, deserts her two small children of three and five years of age, leaves the scene without a trace of her new abode. The lady, clearly does not want to take any responsibility at all for the debacle. And… however her present implications are, she retains the false reality by borrowing images of self-pity, ingratitude – the two monstrous off-shoots of: The Blame Game.
Then, in another case, there is a husband-wife team jointly swearing a total loss of peace because the aged parents of the man have come to live with them. “Our family routine, our life, everything has become topsy-turvy. We can’t meditate, the way we used to. My wife is having migraines and I am having high blood pressure.” What a way to trap yourself in: The Blame-Game!
Another victim of the blame-game… is a person, whose career and life get a huge jolt, primarily, due to his own actions, too. This person might have been better off, if he had “cured” his thinking and applied some swift bit of self-analysis. Instead, he busies himself alloting portions of blames to everybody, for what has happened to him. This one… he simply cannot see how fortunate he has been in getting rocklike constant support from his immediate family. No! He is blind to gratitude. The types of them will even blame their ‘stars.’ “It’s my stars, the astrologer says.”
Personally, I would like to sum it up this way: The moment we stop blaming others, including our stars, and sincerely do a reality-check on ourselves, self-pity will disappear and generally some interest to reap the blessings of God and well-wishers will bring in us thankfulness. From there, the Blame-Game will diminish and life will get a chance to come back on the right track.
Geeta Chhabra
