That’s an unfortunate truth which has skewed the views into a transactional relationship. Not many people talk about the value of paying forward, being helpful because we can find more joy than the short term return of gaining something. It also makes things more difficult because in the long term the whole transactional feeling will lose its value and stop making us happy – the mind goes numb ..

ha ha – can’t deny that :D

Yeah in some ways. I also think there are these phases – the good ones and the bad ones. The good ones make us aware of more blessings – the bad phases however are difficult to handle – particularly in a depressed or a low mood state – there seem to be more lessons. Maybe there’s an even balance, sometimes there is more of blessings and lessons some other. The best thing we might be able to do is to focus as much as possible on the balance and prevent ourselves getting into a shell thinking about the hardships

Ah! That does sound very likely, also it is very feasible that she might have been inspired by these hymns – I suppose we all do, so many things from our childhood influence us and become a value or a belief that we hold on to – some good, some bad – but impressive how these things have such a strong presence in us. I remember most of my thoughts go back to the inspiration from Vivekananda since I used to read his books growing up. Thanks for sharing this – definitely piqued my interest :)