Love for Imperfect Things by Haemin Sunim EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Author: Haemin Sunim
- Publish date: December 24, 2018
- Language: English
- Genre: Philosophy Movements-Meditation-Personal Transformation Self-Help
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 12 MB
- Pages: 272
- Price: Free
- ISBN: 978-0143132288
DON’T BE TOO GOOD
WERE YOU ONE OF THOSE CHILDREN who were praised for
being “good”? Did you then try hard to be good by always
agreeing with parents, teachers, or older relatives? Even
if sometimes it was hard, you learned not to complain
and bore it quietly? And now that you’re an adult, do you
still feel a responsibility to please other people?
Do you
constantly make an effort not to disturb or be a burden
on others? But when there’s someone who makes things
difficult for you, you try just to ignore it or put up with it,
because it is not in your nature to do or say something
that can potentially hurt someone or make someone feel
uncomfortable?
*
I HAVE MET MANY GOOD people who suffer from depression,
panic attacks, and other emotional disorders due to
difficult human relationships. Such people tend to be
gentle, well mannered, and solicitous of others. They are
the kind of self-sacrificing person who will habitually put
other people’s wishes before their own. Why, I
wondered, do such good people often fall victim to
mental and emotional suffering?
I, too, was introverted and meek as a child, and so was
often praised for being “good.” A good son who wouldn’t
give his parents any trouble, a good student who listened
to his teachers—all this taught me was that it was good to
be good. But when I went to graduate school, I began to
feel that there might be a problem with only being good.
In group work with students who were smarter than I
was, with stronger personalities, I found that the tasks
everyone wanted to avoid somehow always fell to me. I
kept on telling myself that it was good to do good, but as
time went by it started causing me quite a bit of stress.
When I opened my heart and spoke honestly to an older
friend who was in the same program, he gave me the
following advice:
“Be good to yourself first, then to others.”
It was like being struck by lightning. Up until then, I
had only ever worried about what other people thought
of me. I had never once thought properly about caring
for myself, or loving myself.
*
WHEN WE SAY THAT SOMEONE is “good,” we often mean that
the person complies with the will of others and isn’t selfassertive.
In other words, people who are good at
suppressing their own desires in deference to another’s
are the ones who frequently get called “good.” If
someone always listens to me and follows my advice,
naturally I like that person and think of him or her as a
good person. It seems that “good” sometimes refers to a
person who thinks too much of others to be able to
express his or her own will.
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