A saint once said, "An angry man is full of poison." I really sympathize with the man who is covered in poison. He is 60 years old. According to the statistics of life insurance company, the average number of years we can live is 2/3 of the difference between our present age and our 80-year-old age. This person-if he is lucky-may live 14 to 15 years. But he wasted nearly a year in the limited rest of his life, resenting the past. I really sympathize with him.
Apart from resentment and self-pity, he could have asked himself why people didn't appreciate him. Is it possible that the salary is too low, the working hours are too long, or employees think that the Christmas bonus is part of their due? Maybe he is too picky and ungrateful, and others dare not and don't want to thank him? Maybe everyone thinks that most of the profits should be taxed anyway, so why not treat them as bonuses? !
Of course, it does not rule out that employees may be really selfish, mean and rude. Maybe so, maybe so. I won't know the whole situation better than you. However, I do know that Dr. Johnson in Britain said, "Gratitude is the product of great education, and you can't get it from ordinary people."
What I want to say is that it is a common mistake for him to expect others to be grateful. He really doesn't understand human nature.
If you save a person's life, do you expect him to thank you? You might! However, look what happened to Samuel leibowitz, who was a famous criminal lawyer before he became a judge and saved 78 criminals from the electric chair. Guess how many of them came to thank you, or at least sent a Christmas card? I think you guessed right-no.
Jesus Christ once made ten paralyzed people stand up and walk in one afternoon-but how many people came back to thank him? There is only one person. Jesus Christ looked around his disciples and asked, "Where are the other nine?" They all ran away without thanking them! I ask you: ordinary people like you and me have given people a little favor, why should they get more gratitude than Jesus? If it's about money, it's even more hopeless! Charles Schwab told me that he once helped a bank teller, who misappropriated bank funds for stock trading and caused losses. Schwab helped him make up the money to avoid litigation. Did the cashier thank him? I thanked him, but only for a moment, and then he turned against the man who saved him-the man who once saved him from prison.
If you give your relative $654.38+00,000, he should thank you, right? Andrew Carnegie helped his relatives, but if Andrew Carnegie comes back to life, he will be shocked to find that this relative is cursing him! Why? Because Carnegie left more than $300 million in charitable funds-but he only inherited $65.438+0 million.
This is the world. Humanity is humanity-you don't have to expect it to change. Why not accept it? We should be like Darius, the wisest Roman emperor. One day, he wrote in his diary:
"I will meet talkative people, selfish people, self-centered people and ungrateful people today. I won't be surprised or bothered because I can't imagine a world without these people. "
Isn't what he said very reasonable? We complain every day that others will not repay us. Who is to blame? Is this human nature? Or did we ignore it? Don't expect others to be grateful. We should be surprised if we get gratitude from others occasionally. If not, I won't be sad.
It is human nature to forget gratitude. If we always expect others to be grateful, we are probably just asking for trouble.
I know a woman who lives in new york. She has been complaining about her loneliness. None of her relatives want to get close to her-it's not all their fault. When you visit her, she will spend hours talking with you about how she takes care of her young nephews. They got measles, mumps and whooping cough, all of which she took care of. They lived with her for many years. She also sponsored a nephew to finish business school, and they lived in her house until she got married.
Have these nephews come back to see her? Oh! Yes! Sometimes! It's entirely out of obligation. But they are afraid to go back to see her, because the thought of sitting for hours listening to those old songs, endless complaints and self-pity are always waiting for them. When the woman found that neither threats nor inducements could bring her nephews back to see her, she had only one last resort-a heart attack.
Is this heart disease fake? Of course not. The doctor also said that her heart was quite neurotic and she often had palpitations. But the doctor was helpless because her question was emotional.
This woman values care and attention, but I thought what she wanted was "gratitude". It's a pity that she will never get gratitude and love, although she thinks she deserves it and asks others to give it to her.
How many people are like her, because others are ungrateful, because they are lonely, because they are neglected and sick. They are eager to be loved, but the only way to really get love in this world is not to ask for anything, but to pay without asking for anything in return. Does this sound unrealistic and idealistic? Actually, it is not! This is the best way to pursue happiness. I saw with my own eyes what happened in my home. My parents are helpful and we are poor-always embarrassed by debt. Although poor, my parents always squeeze out some money to the orphanage every year. They have never been to an orphanage, and no one has ever thanked them except for receiving a reply, but they have been rewarded because they enjoy helping these helpless children and don't expect anything in return.
After leaving home to work, I send my parents a check every Christmas to ask them to buy something they like, but they never buy it. When I came home for Christmas, my father told me that they bought coal and daily necessities for a poor woman with many children in the city. The joy of giving without asking for anything in return is the greatest happiness they can get.
I am convinced that my father has reached Aristotle's ideal of enjoying happiness. Aristotle said: "The ideal person will enjoy the pleasure of helping others."
To pursue true happiness, we must abandon the idea that others will be grateful and only enjoy the happiness we give.
Parents always resent their children's ingratitude. Even King Lear, the master of Shakespeare's plays, could not help shouting, "An ungrateful child is more painful than the sharp teeth of a poisonous snake."
But if we don't educate them, how can children be grateful? It is human nature to be ungrateful. It grows everywhere like a weed. Gratitude is like a rose, which needs careful cultivation and care.
If the child is ungrateful, who is to blame? Maybe we should be blamed. How can we expect them to thank us if we never teach them to thank others?
I once knew a man who lived in Chicago. He often complained that his two stepsons were ungrateful. Its complaints are not entirely unreasonable. He married a widow, and the woman asked him to borrow money everywhere for his two sons to go to college. He works in a carton factory, and his weekly salary is less than that of 40 yuan. He must buy food, clothes and fuel, pay rent and pay off debts. In this way, he worked like a coolie for four years and never complained.
Did anyone thank him? No, my wife takes it for granted, and so do the two stepsons. They never feel that they owe their stepfather anything, and they don't even want to say thank you.
Who can blame? Strange children? Not bad. But it is the mother who is more to blame. In her opinion, there shouldn't be too much "guilt" about these two young people at all. She didn't want her two sons to "owe others anything from the beginning", so she never thought of saying "your stepfather is really a good man and helped you finish college", but adopted the opposite attitude: "This is the least he should do."
She thought it would be good for the growth of her two sons, but in fact, it was equivalent to putting her children on the road of life and creating a dangerous concept that the whole world owed itself. This is a dangerous concept. Later, one of her two sons wanted to "borrow some money" from the boss and ended up in prison.
So it must be remembered that children's behavior is entirely caused by their parents. Another example: My period never thought that her children would "appreciate" her. When I was a child, I remember taking my mother home and taking care of her mother-in-law. Now close your eyes, I still clearly remember two old ladies sitting in front of the fireplace in the menstrual farm. Will they give trouble to menstruation? Of course it will. But you can't see any trouble in her words and deeds. For the two old ladies, she is obedient and pampered, making them spend their old age very comfortably. Besides two elderly people, I have to take care of six children during my menstrual period. But she never felt anything special about what she did, and she didn't expect to win praise from others by bringing two old ladies home. In her mind, this is a natural thing, and it is also her own responsibility, and it is something she likes to do.
What about menstruation now? After being widowed for more than 20 years, all five children have grown up and organized five small families, and everyone is vying to live with their mother. The children adore her and don't want to leave her anyway. Is this gratitude? No, this is love-pure love. These children were deeply influenced by love in their childhood, but now the situation is reversed, so it is not surprising that they can give love.
Therefore, please remember: to cultivate grateful and kind children, we must first practice ourselves. Pay attention to our words and deeds; Remember not to despise the benefits that others give us in front of children. Never say, "Look at the Christmas present that Cousin Su gave us. These tablecloths were hooked by herself and didn't cost her a dime. " This kind of words may be easy to say, but children may listen.
In order to avoid feeling sad and worrying about others' ungrateful, here is the third rule:
First, don't be unhappy because others are ungrateful, realize that this is only a natural thing.
Second, let's remember that the only way to find happiness is to give without asking for anything in return, and give only for the pleasure of giving.
Third, let us remember that gratitude is the result of "education". If we want our children to know gratitude, we must teach them to do so.
-Quoted from The Complete Works of the Advantages of Human Nature by Yanbian People's Publishing House.