Value of a Promise
By Karmayogi
A promise is given to another. A
vow is taken for oneself. A good part of the population has financial
difficulties of all descriptions, at all levels. I can offer one suggestion to
them for immediate temporary relief. Such suggestions are as old as Thirukural
or Ramayana. Suppose someone has debts from forty people totalling Rs 87 lakhs
and he is now faced with an emergency of a serious type for three lakhs of
rupees, his getting that amount is not possible. When someone offers him that
money on an understanding that the next collection will pay it off, the
temptation is not to repay it but to meet earlier emergencies. What is involved
is not money only. It is the personality. Should the person pay off whatever
little amount he gets towards the promised payment, all his 87 lakhs will soon
be paid off.
We look at MONEY as money. Money is what the man makes. It is his personality
that attracts money or repels it. Someone relieves you in an emergency. If you
vow to return the money as you promised to yourself, your personality gets
strengthened and attracts more money. In no time, all the Rs 87 lakhs of debt
dissolves. Generally, those who have perennial money difficulties will have the
following attitudes: 1) As soon as some cash comes in, they will spend it on
some new want of theirs, 2) they will pay off more pressing debts than the one
for which it is earmarked, 3) any cleverer person around will take off the money.
A small percentage of people will borrow with a definite intention of NOT
returning it. They cannot be commented upon. A rare few have a way of
challenging the lender, finding some flimsy complaint, ‘‘Can you
get your money back?''
The finest type in all these cases is one who lays a trap for someone to walk
into so that he can have a permanent gain. People do not so much do it in
money, but readily do it in a situation that resembles a bargain. In my
experience, they are the meanest of human beings. With a few of them, I made an
experiment – spiritual. I willingly and consciously entered the trap and they
had the joy of having caught me, but not my soul that had done the experiment. I
emerged unscathed each time. More than that, life offered a greater reward. In
most cases, I do not know what happened to those who laid the trap. In a few
cases, I did know what happened to them. I shudder to record what they went
through, sometimes before my very eyes.