Wish you all a very happy Ganesh Chaturthi.
We all love our dear Ganesha a lot and whenever Bappa comes, he brings a smile on the face of all his devotees.
Being a true devotee, it's our duty to make Bappa also smile and feel him proud. He definitely gets happy to see all the devotion and celebration but he will be truly elated if we could follow his teachings, comprehend their real meaning, and try to become like our ideal Ganesha instead of just worshipping his idol.
There are many stories we have heard about Lord Ganesha and every story teaches us salient lessons of life.
Today, I would like to share some of them and pray that Lord Ganesha bestows us with wisdom to understand the true essence of these stories and his attributes.
We all must have heard the story about Lord Ganesha's birth. Mata Parvati asked her son Ganesha to guard and not allow anyone to enter. But Shivji, unaware of the fact that Ganesha had been created by Parvatiji, in the wrath of his anger and fury, beheaded him when Ganesha tried to stop him. But after realizing his mistake, he brought back his life and accepted him as his own son.
This story taught us three important things - to be loyal to your loved ones, anger will cause only harm to you and your family, and lastly, accept your mistakes and try to rectify it.
Another story which is very famous and always is told for Bappa's intelligence is when Ganeshji and his younger brother Karthikeyaji had been asked to circumvent their world 3 times by Shivji to settle down a dispute between them, then Ganeshji decided to take 3 rounds around his parents and said that they are his universe.
What we learned from this story is that sometimes a difficult task can be handled smartly with wisdom and presence of mind so we should not give up. Another important lesson is to always love and respect your parents. They make you their world so why not make them yours.
We all are aware that Shivji announced that before starting any new endeavor, it would be auspicious to worship Ganpatiji and take his blessings. And we follow it along, be it a personal, social, or any kind of function or beginning of any new work. It is believed that Ganpatiji makes sure that our work gets completed without any obstacles.
This gives us another important learning that when someone gives us any responsibility keeping trust on us, consider it as your own and try to complete it by giving your 100%.
We call Lord Ganesha as "Vighnaharta" and pray to him to take away all our worries and problems. Similarly, we should also try to be other's Vighnaharta by not creating problems for anyone and try to help someone in difficulty and free them from their worries.
Lord Ganesha's long ears signify that we should listen more, small-mouth denotes to speak less, and big belly symbolizes to digest anything, be it good or bad.
There is so much to learn from Bappa and just by following his teachings and attributes can certainly make our lives happy and peaceful. If we could try to absorb even a little bit out of it, that would be the real worship of Ganpati Bappa.