Be Happy! (Pt. 2)

"We prefer to be miserable because it is rewarding.  That is the reason we do not want to be happy and cannot find the reasons to be joyful.  We find it terribly convenient to remain in suffering.  To understand this, we should look at the behaviour of a child when it starts crying, complaining of stomachache.  There is no stomachache at all.  It is only to draw the attention of everybody so that mummy will carry the child and put it on her lap, pampering and coddling it.

The same child, even if it has a stomachache, will not cry when the parents are not there.  The child complains and cries only when it is near the parents, to draw their attention.  This becomes more pronounced when there are some guests and the parents are talking to them.  Then the child wails even more because it wants everyone's attention.

It is the same situation with a housewife who has been chatting with her neighbours, suddenly pretends to be ill and lies down on the bed, complaining of headache on the arrival of her husband home from office after a long working day.  What explains the behaviour of the housewife?  She wants the husband to give her special attention.

What does Baba say about this?  As we consider stealing drinking or adultery to be a sin, living with an unhappy attitude is also a sin.  To make others unhappy is a greater sin, in fact, worst of all sins.  Why then, are some people happy seeing the distress of other people?  Because by making others suffer, they can forget their own unhappiness and misery.  Such people can forget their own problems by creating problems for others.  A perverted attitude makes them feel "I am better than him because he is more miserable and unhappy than I am.""

(From the book "Sai-chology" by Prof. K. Anil Kumar)