In the Bhagavad Gita Krishna tells Arjuna: "It is better to do your own work badly than to perfectly do anothers; you are safe from harm when you do what you should be doing." It is easy to get lost in this. What is your own work? Where does your work leave off and someone else's begin? When contemplating the wisdom here, look beyond the usual interpretation of "work" meaning merely livelihood. Look closer at all your work - including but not limited to your daily tasks and jobs. Consider also, work such as self-study, personal growth and spiritual work. Observe your words, your reactivity, your critical and judgmental thoughts and your everyday deeds and conversations as well. It may surprise you to discover how quickly a conversation can turn to a commentary on someone else's business - someone who is not even present and did not ask for help or guidance. How helpful is that? How often do you feel you have an answer to someone else's problems? If they only ate this way or dressed that way or if they acted the way you think they should, relaxed more or worked harder, then we could all be happy and we wouldn't have these problems!
But that is not the teaching we find here. Each of us has enough work of our own to do without worrying about what others are up to, or what they may be thinking about what we are doing. I observe my own tendencies to want to correct something or fix it for someone else by offering unsolicited advice about what they should do or to even do things for them. How much more effective it might be simply to be present for them, and to give them the reflective room to figure out their own solutions! At those moments, I like to take a step back and ask if what I am about to say or do is welcomed, or is it really going to help? Is this something I am doing to win the approval of someone, or to make myself more comfortable with someone's difficult situation? I ask myself what I can learn from observing without interfering. I ask myself if there is a teaching in it somewhere for me. In Byron Katie's work, she has us ask "whose business is this, yours, mine or God's?" If we stay in our business, we are, as Krishna says, "safe from harm". We avoid the feeling of being taken advantage of, or feeling 'put out' because we've taken on someone else's responsibilities when we shouldn't have. We avoid speaking foolishly or hurtfully and possibly causing harm where it wasn't intended. Trust in the great unfolding of life. It is hard to know what someone else might need to learn for their greater development. We have enough to do just figuring out our own lessons! Beyond that, be simple, be beautiful, be LOVE and it'll all work out.
