Suppose we have a significant part in a story being enacted in a mega-theater where multiple plays are going on. But suppose someone misleads us into some other play, where we are made a bit player, doing an insignificant part that just wastes our time and talent. We will feel outrageously cheated.

We all run the danger of being similarly cheated. The world is like a mega-theater where multiple stories are being enacted. Herein, we can enact a grand story, provided we understand ourselves. Gita wisdom explains that we are eternal souls on a multi-life journey of spiritual evolution. To enact the story of our evolution, we need to learn to lovingly serve the Whole, the all-attractive supreme, Krishna. To understand how we can best serve, we need to look within to identify what matters most to us, what we have been gifted with, what we feel deeply driven to do.

Unfortunately, instead of seeking such self-understanding, we get diverted by externals. In today’s ultra-commercialized world, many agents of materialism sell us a seductive story by mouthing slogans such as the consumer is the king. Actually however, we become consumed by desires and become reduced to mere cogs in a vast economic engine that fills their pockets and empties ours. If we listen to their story, they will bombard our mind and senses with myriad temptations, sending us on an exhausting and frustrating search for petty pleasures (Bhagavad-gita 15.07).

Thankfully, we don’t have to enact this sorry story; we can find our own story. If we practice bhakti-yoga and connect with Krishna, we get, by his mercy the inner calm and clarity to understand ourselves. Equipped with such healthy self-awareness, we all can chart for ourselves a rich life of outer contribution and inner satisfaction.