If we think that ‘hurt’ is a part of ‘love’, we may feel pacified. We should question ourselves, “Do we feel so much hurt and become angry when a stranger utters an unkind word or misbehaves with us?” Truly speaking, it often happens with everybody. Do we not brush away the thoughts that arise in our mind? We do so by auto-suggestions and auto-answers thinking that he has lost his wits, he has no manners; he is illiterate and uncivilised and so on. We do not bother about him and proceed further, and we forget the whole thing after some time. But if someone close to us hurts us, we become restless and we seethe with rage for a long The Way of Life {61} time. We find it difficult to digest the ‘hurt’ and suppress the simmering ‘anger’, and thus remain perturbed for days. How can we forget such a hurt? The reality is that the remedy for forgetting the ‘hurt’ lies with us. We do not think about our ‘mistakes’ and the hurts caused to others. We take it lightly and try to convince ourselves: “Oh! I did not mean it. I had no intention of causing a hurt. Whatever words I spoke were uttered unknowingly.” Now see our double standard. When someone hurts us, we think that that the person did it intentionally; but in our case, we generally say, “Oh! I had no intention of hurting the person concerned.” Are we not hypocrites? Should we not think about the other person as we think about ourselves?