The Curse of Idle Longing

When a teacher enters the classroom, is it truly wrong if the students don't rise to their feet? If respect lives in the heart, isn't that enough? Why display it outwardly?

When elders enter the room and we stand to show them honour—what's the necessity of that? Humility already dwells within us. So what meaning could there be in a humility merely for show?

Suppose you deeply dislike someone. One day you resolve: today I'll shed all my anger and irritation toward this person. Carrying the weight of enmity is no light burden, after all. So you decide: I'll go to their home with some sweets in hand. I'll sweeten their mouth and their family's, bridge the distance between us. But something strange happens. Some invisible force prevents you from doing it. Something inside you resists, and you cannot bring yourself to meet them at all. Then you think: never mind. As long as I harbour no ill will toward them in my heart, that's enough! Why do I need to show them anything?

You love someone. To love is to wish them happiness; so your heart yearns to do countless things for their joy. Yet in the end, nothing gets done. Your love has no pretence, your desire to make them happy is sincere. But you never commit yourself deliberately to doing what would actually make them happy. In your heart you love them deeply; you claim you could even give your life to make them happy. But the claim is all there is. No one has ever seen you do anything to back those words—not the person themselves, nor anyone else.

Whatever stirs in the corners of the heart, unless it takes shape in actual deed, nothing truly comes to pass. We are called to pray not to appease the Creator, but to purify our own soul. All our religious practice serves us alone, not the Almighty. Reverence, love, affection—these impulses, if never expressed, fade away with time. Once gone, they cannot be restored. When a thought troubles us, if we cannot act upon it, and if we don't even make a visible effort to try, then that thought is nothing but idle wish.

People fail in life not for lack of dreams, but under the curse of idle wishes. Before God, human action matters—not intention.