Hell on Earth
by
Oakenstone

Hell does not exist except as what you make of your life while you are on this plane of existence. The same goes for Heaven. Your time on this earth may be one of Heaven or it may be one of Hell but usually it is a healthy mix of the two. Some people have hardships that we cannot imagine and seem to be happy, others seem to have a perfect life on the outside but deep within their hearts they are facing their own personal Hell. It is easy to look at someone else's life and determine that they have it easier than we do but we cannot possibly know how that individual feels.

I realize these things only in my moments of deepest reflection. On a personal note I have been through my own private Hell these last few months but to some people it would seem that I was just being melodramatic and maybe on the surface what they saw of me would seem so. This private Hell allowed me to see the hypocrisy that people practice when it comes to passing judgment on others, when we compare our life to another's. We feel the things that some people are experiencing are not so bad but that is just our own personal judgment of someone else's problem.

When we criticize another individual for their perspective on life we close the door on what could turn out to be valuable knowledge in our own life. The knowledge and insight we can gain from being an observer and opening the mind to the understanding that maybe it really is bad for another person, regardless of what we might think, is a powerful asset. It can help us to better understand our own life and the possibility that we are not as strong as the face we put on for the world.

Instead of judging people we need to take a look at our own lives and see ourselves as the world sees us. When we do that we might find that our own personal Hells might be looked at by society at large as being petty and unimportant, just as we have practiced that hypocrisy in our own views. Hell is a personal place and just as real no matter what the cause to the individual. Remember the old saying: "one man's hell is another man's heaven" the next time you feel compelled to sit in judgment.