During an intimate conversation with a dear friend, he told me, “I wish you write an article about man’s abandonment of his friends, parents, siblings, family, children or even God; the phenomenon of age. Our conversation was over, but his words echoed in my mind, ideas started turning into words.
Speaking about principles does not include the positive ones only. There are many negative principles people adopt and it would be good to accentuate them in order to reveal the contrast, the positive ones, and vice versa; discussing the positive principles and its contrastive negative ones will shed light on merits of the positive and the demerits of the negative at the same time. For instance: we promote value of meekness and gentleness in man’s life, when talking about person’s rage that may lead to destroying his life and his close ones’ too.
While talking about “abandonment”, another word comes to my mind which is “forsaking”. The two words nearly have the same meaning. By checking the Arabic lexicon “M’jam Al-maany Algam’a “, we can find that the Arabic word “TARAK” which means “to abandon” or to abandon someone and is interpreted as “leaving someone alone” and one of the meanings of the Arabic verb “TARAK” is “to wave” like waving a right or “resigning” resign a job. As for the Arabic word “Takhla”, it has different meanings which include “Leaving” like leaving a house and “Forsaking or giving up on” like forsaking or disappointing a friend. Abandonment brings to mind a negative image, however by thinking over; you will know that it has a positive meaning. For instance, giving up sins is a positive and all religions encourage. It is a turning point in one’s life. As one of the church’s fathers said, “Repentance is giving up sins and regretting them“.
Quitting negative personality traits or habits is blissful as it involves a total improvement of man’s character, behavior and perspective. He adopts a healthy lifestyle and be friendly to others, thus maintain a positive attitude. For instance: quitting smoking, overcoming any sort of addiction that ruins man’s life and makes him go on a cycle of pain and need that usually leads to a pathetic end.
There is also another kind of positive abandonment which is giving up on bad friends or evil counselors. In life, man meets different people with different perspectives and personal traits. Some of them will help him to be a better person; others will try their best to turn him into a bad person. For example some may try to distort other people’s image in his eyes to make him take an aggressive stance toward them. Other people may unreasonably justify others’ mistakes, thus man needs to take a decisive decision regarding those people, that is, to forsake those friends who induce him to abandon his truly loving humanity.
On the contrary, there are sorts of abandonment that negatively affect man’s life and make him lose many good values and principles. To be continued…
Anba Ermiah, General Bishop& President of the Coptic Orthodox Cultural Center
