All of us, sometime or the other, get too concerned or emotional about people or things and that hurts us. Let us understand how concerned we should be.

Concern is best defined as worry or anxiety. It is also described as a thing that is important or interesting. We souls are placed in different circumstances based on our past deeds. Some relatives we are born to, like our parents and others we choose, like our life-partners. We acquire material things such as jobs, houses, etc or aspire to possess them. Usually these are the persons or things we are most concerned about.

Most of the times concern does not translate into positive action. It remains verbal or on the mental level or in the other extreme, transgress the free will each of us possess, that is, we try to take over the lives of others. Both are ineffective or harmful.

So one must always know what is one’s duty in relation to a person or thing and must strictly confine oneself to that. Concern can be easily replaced by duty but any mismatch hurts. Duty towards a person must take into consideration the permission and opinion of the receiver too. After ascertaining this, one should assist that person in the best way possible. This is really doing one’s duty.

Unfortunately we don’t do that ; we prefer to be concerned since being concerned is so much easier. Also, concern keeps us in a superior position while doing duty requires serving, which we think is a lower position. By doing our duty, we help others to be up and about and then we don’t have to be so much concerned about them.

Therefore, the scriptures recommend that we do our duty towards one’s own body, relatives, etc and we reserve our concern for our peace, happiness and security, obtainable from God.