If while traveling, our car tank starts drying up, we need to refuel, lest we get stranded.

Our heart is like a tank that runs on the fuel of love. Though no metaphor can describe the heart fully, the love tank metaphor can help illumine our feelings. Just as an empty fuel tank causes a car to malfunction, an empty love tank causes us to malfunction. But the nature of the malfunction differs substantially: Whereas the car stops moving, we start exploding.

When we interact with difficult people, we often feel drained. If we have to interact with too many such people, we feel not just drained but also irritated. And then if someone else makes even a innocuous request, that becomes for us the trigger for an explosion.

To prevent such explosions, whenever we start feeling drained, we need to associate with those who love us, understand us and help us regain our perspective. And ultimately, we need the person who loves us the most, understands us the best and restores our perspective most effectively. That person is Krishna, who the Bhagavad-gita (05.29) states, is our greatest well-wisher.

By bhakti-yoga, we can invoke within our heart his soothing, healing, energizing presence. Becoming absorbed in his remembrance reassures us that he is always there to shelter us, even if people around us behave unreasonably. Thus, bhakti refuels our love tank.

Unfortunately, we sometimes perform bhakti practices perfunctorily, as rituals to get over with. Thus, we unwittingly become like people who go to a gas station but don’t open their car’s fuel tank there.

By practicing bhakti with fervency and urgency, we open our heart to Krishna and realize his benevolence. Being thus energized, we can deal with difficult people more patiently and intelligently, thereby easing their life-journey or at least easing our own life-journey.

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