There is an old proverb that 'गधों के सिर पर सींग नहीं होते," which means stupidity does not have a specific sign. Many people appear to be intelligent from a distance, and when we interact with them, we realize how foolishly they speak and how narrow their perspective on life is. When donkeys and horses are mixed, it requires great wisdom to identify the donkeys so that not much time is wasted trying to convince them of something wise.
I feel that this is one of the most critical skills in today's world. Not so that this skill was not important in other ages. Had Karna been aware of this and had applied little wisdom and discrimination, he would not have gotten trapped in Duryodhana's narrow frame of greed. Vibhishana could understand this and therefore he decided to leave Ravana. Earlier, at least people were not so deceptive. In today's world full of deception and identity theft, one of the most important life skills for our kids is to understand that cheaters and criminals do not have a different face. They have to learn to learn to recognize potentially harmful people and not get deceived by appearances.
We have to understand that donkeys do not have horns on their head but we can identify donkeys with their behaviour. Similarly, we can identify people by being aware of little nuances in their behavior. I feel that one of the most important attributes of a sensible person is that he lives a life of freedom and equality. He respects himself and respects everybody around him. This comes with an understanding of the larger picture of life. Since all of us share the same Source, all are equally valuable and therefore need to be respected by each other. Therefore a sensible person would respect every employee and person working with him and value his time. Similarly, he would fight for that respect if somebody tried to insult him. On the other hand, a weak person would fear the people having greater power and try to intimidate the weak. I feel that this is one thing that can be easily noticed in the behavior of the people we interact with by looking at their behavior in different situations i.e. before their bosses and their subordinates. Accordingly, we learn to distinguish between sensible and senseless people.
If a person does not respect the basic dignity of fellow human beings, that's a big red flag. If this basic understanding of life is not there, naturally such a person will be insecure and these insecurities would reflect in different forms. He would try to seek security in one or the other external things such as money, power, position, social validation, relationships, or beliefs. It's a law of nature that the more he seeks security in these things the more insecure he will become. The more tightly we try to hold on to the sand, the more quickly it slips out of our hands. That feeling of slipping away makes an insecure person more insecure and out of insecurity he makes more efforts. In the process, his behavior becomes inauthentic and pretensions become part of his character.
We can easily notice all these red flags by observing the reactions of the people to different situations. Whether they tell lies in a routine manner, whether they ridicule the characters of people by just looking at one aspect of their personality, whether they are in awe of people sitting on high positions while not having respect for the people low in rank, whether their topics of discussions are quite self-centered, how do they see the purpose of their lives, do they pretend to be something other than what they are, do they try to eat away the credit of somebody else, do they use their relationships to get some mileage in office, what is their reaction to the poverty and inequality in the world, and so on. Little awareness will help us notice these and many more red flags and then we can decide how to handle relationships with these people.
The fact is that we are mostly aware of these red flags, yet we ignore them because we ourselves are quite insecure and inauthentic. Unless we work on our understanding of life and our own insecurities, we will choose to conveniently ignore these red flags and waste this precious life by falling into the trap of these people. 'चोर चोर मौसेरे भाई' We would scratch each other's back for nobody's advantage. At some stage, we have to make a choice whether we want to "seek" security the worldly way or we want to "look inwards". For a mind having a strong habit of looking outwards, it's quite difficult to look inwards especially where the parents and the entire ecosystem are so outward looking. I can tell only one thing from my experience even little effort to look inward is reciprocated by Nature with manifold force. There has never been a time in my life, at least since 2003, when I have a question in my mind and do not find a book to answer that question. I met so many realized souls without any planning as if they were destined to come to my life. I feel that it is the first and foremost duty of all parents to at least introduce kids to the inner journey and rest Nature will take care of. Else life would be just a race for them where the "Winner Stands Alone".
Comments