BOASTING
While self-praise may be good, boasting is not. The
former shows self-love, self-appreciation, self-confidence, self-inspiration,
and self-satisfaction; the latter expresses excessive pride and
self-satisfaction in one’s achievements, possessions, abilities, talents,
skills, performances, achievements, etc.
If self-praise may be fair and equitable; boasting may be
unfair, exaggerated and unjustifiable.
Both self-praise and boasting should not forget the virtue of
humility. Today’s success can be tomorrow’s failure; and present victory can be
followed by future defeat,
In every success and in every achievement be thankful to God.
You are not self-sufficient. Your
perfection for every accomplishment needs God’s help and blessings.
It is undesirable to claim yourself as the best, the
strongest, and the most advanced in the world.
We live on a common earth, shared by different nations, with
different beliefs, faiths, religions, political ideologies, philosophies, and natural
resources.
The happiness of the world lies in the co-operative working
of all the nations, not in the policy of subduing each other.
Remember the philosophy of togetherness and of co-existence
and also that of the Biblical saying:
Love thy neighbor as thyself.” Neighbour
here means everybody in the world wherever he may be.
Also remember a poet’s saying: No lands are strange; no men
are foreign.
There is an un-contradictable saying : The end of boasting is
the beginning of dignity.
The English poet William Shakespeare (1564-1616) rightly
believed that “The empty vessel makes the greatest sound.”
The Church of England clergyman and religious writer William Secker
(d.1681) said: Usually the greatest boasters are the smallest workers. The deep
rivers pay a larger tribute to the sea than shallow brooks, and yet empty themselves
with less noise.
Finally, this popular quote on boasting: Whatever
accomplishment you boast of in the world, there is someone better than you.
*******
G.R.Kanwal
27 March 2025
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