Steem4Nigeria Weekly Contest - What I Believed Versus the Real Picture

You are right that many beliefs are not always real, but we do not realize it in childhood. Because either they have become part of us by then or our faith in the things told by our elders.

  
But there comes a time when we can see the truth. So, I will tell you about my two habits, about which I think about my thoughts. In my case, the results would certainly not have been positive if I hadn’t gotten rid of them.

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Situation One: Attainment of Salvation

Trust me, when I read your contest, many such points came to my mind, which were told to me growing up, and I had a belief in them. Or you can say that at least I followed them.

I remember my grandmother always used to say that beggars are helpless, and we should help them. I used to do this all the time, and while going to school, I saw a beggar who was about 30 years old and sitting about 200 metres away from my house singing and playing his guitar, and I always gave him my pocket money.

I had never seen him doing any other work. Never even take a bath or change clothes. I was 8 years old.

When I turned 10, I used to give him my pocket money regularly. Then one day, it came to my mind that he had gotten used to always asking, so is it fair to have compassion for him? Why can’t he do anything?

Surely such questions were bound to arise in my mind one day. I thought he was a beggar who just begged because he could not work. Then I thought, who made him a beggar? Who encouraged its tendency to beg? We, you and I!Who else?

A storm of thoughts went through my mind. It is beggar, because this society is full of people like my grandmother, who are full of beggar production systems. So this beggar also got used to it, because this society inculcates the habit of begging.

People here believe that by giving alms, charity will give us salvation; we shall attain heaven and God. In a society where there are such people who explain that by giving alms, giving charity, and giving money to the poor, one will get salvation, in that society, if foolish people like me understand that this is the way to attain salvation. So what is the fault of people who do not want to work but want to survive on alms? What is their fault in the birth of a poor man?

Now I have grown up a lot, and I firmly believe that all the members of the society in which there are poor and beggars handle that. That society in which the soul of a human being has to stand in the condition of begging, that society is worthy of condemnation; that entire society is worthy of condemnation.

And if people like my grandmother think they are doing some virtuous work by giving alms to a beggar, then they are wrong. Because the alms given to the beggars do not benefit anyone, but only the one who earns by begging. Then he doesn’t want to do any work, and you can find this problem everywhere in the world, including in developed countries.

I wish that if your mind is full of compassion, then you have many ways to change this society. Change the reason you were born a beggar. Find the reason not in the beggar but in the one who has mercy on yourself where the beggar is not born. Donating to a beggar is a life wasted rather than showing compassion to the beggar.

Your compassion is causing a beggar to be satisfied, and he will do nothing else in his life. And in a society where the number of beggars is so large, that society will never progress.

Today, when I have grown up, I understand how wrong my grandmother was. She told me that the people who give charity are not doing good to the beggar but harming him, and that they understand they will get salvation.

And this society makes him a beggar. He could not know this. He should not come to know that it is this society that drinks his blood, makes him a beggar, and also gives him satisfaction by throwing two pennies on the idea that the society is charitable and good people. The only result of this is that the revolution which the poor could have made, their revolution, dies, and society remains alive. The society that survives on alms is wrong. It is where the poor are born.

Those who have compassion in their hearts can create a society where the poor are not born. I do not consider those who give alms to anyone, but the question is about eradicating poverty. Poverty itself is a social evil that is a blot on the forehead of the entire society. The complete system from which poverty is born should end.

Those whose people want to bring revolution in society will not talk of charity and begging, but they should have only one aim: the eradication of poverty.

In fact, the social and political system that we have today results from this evil. And unless our thinking changes, they will remain poor beggars. Beggars will beg, and they will continue to give what they can.

Today, I do not even want to imagine that our society should lower its soul so much that it supports such men who make begging their habit. And if you think you are going to get some salvation by donating to this beggar, then surely you are not doing any good to that beggar.

If I thought I was doing good to this man by giving my pocket money to beggars, then I was wrong. According to my grandmother, I was making my way to heaven by paying them my pocket money. His humility was being used so that I would get heaven, salvation, and God. But what was the beggar getting? Just a life that had no purpose. My belief was wrong, it had nothing purposeful.

Situation Two: Day Dreaming

The second lesson they taught me as a child was day dreaming.I also believed, like others, that to live an ideal life, one should dream. I also dream of living a perfect life. Everyone sees, but is daydreaming appropriate?

I was told that dreaming was the biggest way to be successful. Like everyone else, I wanted a perfect life. Everyone dreams of it. Like everyone, I was told that to lead a good and successful life, I should dream. Now, dreaming is not something that is in my hands, so I started daydreaming.

Daydreaming is something that used to make me happy. Sometimes I used to get lost in the thoughts of my upcoming successful life while sitting during the day. My dream was to become the biggest badminton player in the world and have the richest business.

So believe me, in these daydreams, I spent more than half of my time in a fake world. I felt distracted by my surroundings in the real world, and all my attention was wandering somewhere into an imaginary world.

I have confessed that this is a common thing, but it addicted me to it and I could feel its effect on my body and mind. I was then 17 years old.

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I had almost reached a point where daydreaming had become more than usual, and this situation was now disturbing me. I was in a different world, apart from reality.

Now I felt like it was taking my thinking into a world where there was no reality in my dreams and ideal life. Who would want that? I didn’t want to, so I changed my routine and actually started spending my spare time on the badminton court. I was trying my best to come out of the dream world and come to the real world.

Believe me, daydreaming is more scary than it can be after a certain point.

Over time, I could control myself in the outside world from the grips of daydreaming.

Daydreaming after a limit distracts you from your work, but yes, if you keep it to a limit, then it gives you a chance to make plans or find the meaning of life.

I’ve moved on from fantasizing about winning gold medals in top tournaments, and now I’m content to practise on my local badminton court.

Yes, I want everything that will make me happy. But dreams do not mean that we sit during the day and get lost in the thoughts of our upcoming grand life. This is probably what is called daydreaming. It is as if we spend our waking hours daydreaming by diverting our attention from the things of the world and taking our minds to a state where nothing is real.

So, as I used to hear in childhood that daydreaming motivates you to do something good in the future, that is right to an extent. But after that, if you get addicted to daydreaming, it will have such an effect on your body and mind that it will be difficult to get out.

Out-of-bounds Daydreaming is when you think more than usual, and your daydreams are distracting or take you to a different world than your reality. You find yourselves lost in a world different from where you belong.

So I gave up this second belief in my childhood and avoided going into my fictional stories. Well, dream, but only as much as you can accomplish. I do not do any such thing that I close my eyes during work time and start thinking about becoming Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, or Adani. I don’t have any daydreaming that makes me live in fantasy. No more...
  
I invite @goonyoung, @dua811 and @herison to please come and check about this wonderful topic.

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