Selflessness: a reflection

Legend has it that Hanuman - the monkey-faced hindu god - symbolizes the pinnacle of bhakti, or selflessness and loving devotion. He was blessed with great might and power; unfortunately, he was cursed with never realizing his prowess unless people manages to convince him.

Selflessness comes from thinking outside oneself, from putting oneself in the shoe of another, to feel the person's pain, joy, anxiety, and frustration. Unfortunately, when we become selfless, we also tend to focus too much on the other person, on the problem, and forget about what we can do to help the person. In most cases, we get carried away and we too end up losing ourselves.

In an ideal world, I believe we should not be selfless, before we understand who "the self" in each of us really is, before we know what we are capable of. We can only help others if we know how to help ourselves first.

But this is not an ideal world, we're not born on this earth knowing who we are. We learn who we are from the people around us, including those we are called to help.

In the legends, a group of monkeys sang praises to Hanuman, reminding him of what he had done in the past; this enabled Hanuman to gather all his might and jump across the vast ocean in order to save Sita. Perhaps this too applies to us; perhaps, we also depend on those around us, on our friends, our families, and on God to help us discover who we are and what we can do to achieve what we're called to do.