Waiting for others to
live up to our expectation is a waste of time.
Reflect on this
story.
A family of tortoise
went on a picnic. They packed food and set out to a place they had selected…
behind the hills. When they reached the spot, they unpacked their picnic
basket. They realized they had forgotten to bring salt. Food without salt is
tasteless.
They had a conference
to decide who should go back and get salt. After a lot of discussion, the
youngest tortoise was chosen, as he was faster than the others.
The youngest objected
on the ground that before he could come back the others might eat the snacks.
But they assured him they would wait for him to come back with salt. Six months
passed, but the youngest tortoise did not turn up. So the rest of the family
decided to open the basket and eat the snacks. When they opened the snack
basket, the little tortoise jumped out of the bushes and screamed, “Look, I knew you
would not wait till I came back. For six months I have been hiding in these
bushes to make sure you would not eat without me. Now my suspicion has been
confirmed, and I am not going to get the salt.”
Some of us are
exactly like our suspicious tortoise: we waste our own time waiting for people
to live up to our expectations. Instead of doing the right thing ourselves, we
wait for others to act in ways we expect them to. We waste our time waiting for
others to live according to our expectations. We have not learned to enjoy
doing what our intuitive judgement tells us is the right thing.
Is stress related to
egoism?
Yes, very much.
Egoism implies our conviction that we are more important than others, and our
beliefs are the truth. Ego means our point of view is more important than that
of others, more important than even truth. So we are trapped within our point
of view. Not only are we arrogant about our point of view, we believe in our
infallibility. This arrogance creates stress. Being stuck to our point of view
creates stress.
Reflect on this.
A husband and wife
were quarrelling. Each kept screaming at the other. The house was a living
hell. Then the husband walked out of the house. The couple’s teenager son,
seeing his father walk out, asked his mother, “Is Daddy going to be back?”
“Yes, he will be back
in half an hour,” replied the mother.
“Damn,” said the
youngster in obvious disappointment, “I thought of eating his dessert.”
When self-interest or
ego prevails in our mind, we begin to compete with everyone for everything, no
matter what the cost. We do not see beyond our self gratification.
Be playful and
flexible. If you need to work long hours in the office, enjoy it, play with it.
Convert the work place into a fun place with commitment.
Then you don’t work
for joy, work itself becomes joy.
Drop the ‘I’ and
‘mine’ and live in the ‘We’. The universe is one. It is, and has, a unity.
Don’t live in the division of the ego. Without the ego, we experience a
beautiful connectedness with everything else in the great chain of being: with
the birds, the stars, the sky and the trees. You can envision them to be
different parts of your body, or yourself to be part of one or more of them. It
is this connectedness that is known as ‘Nirvana’. Reality is unity and illusion
is division.
What lies at the root
of impatience?
One has to cultivate
the state of being patient. We have to trust the universe with its own ways of
opening and closing windows of opportunity and doors to happiness and
prosperity. We have to learn to be patient. A boy loved mangoes. He bought the
best of seeds and planted the mango seed. Every morning he would dig the earth
to see if it had sprouted. In this process he never allowed the seed to sprout.
Our impatience works in the same stupid way.
Impatience is a
result of lack of trust. We trust our ego and not the miracle of life. Since we
depend on our ego, we take for granted the way nature reveals her mysteries.
Our imagination projects a reality and we don’t recognize anything else as
real. We are lost in our subjective reality.
Patience is a
spiritual quality and discipline. Patience is predicated on the faith that God
knows better than we ever can hope to know what is good for us. Impatience, on
the other hand, asserts, “God should be clever enough to let me have things my
own way because, after all, what I want is paramount.” Patience accepts that
God’s will is greater than my will.
Really a great story.
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