Vivekananda
life-changing thoughts --- Strength is life; Weakness is death
I want you to forget yourself for some-time and go into the
minds of the following three personalities. Listen to the situations and think
what you would do if you were them.
Situation 1 – You were from a well-respected big family with
name and fame. You had been searching for spiritual awakening but you couldn’t
find the right master to show you the right path. You came to one of the holy
places in India called ‘kasi’. You feel exhausted physically as well as
mentally. You are trembling to walk; you cannot move a bit even one step
forward. You are afraid of your present and future life in this unfair world.
All of a sudden, you encounter 6-7 ferocious monkeys in front of you. They
start running towards you by making fierce noise. You start running without
knowing a way to get escaped. You are running for your life. You are running
for your survival. How can you handle it better?
Situation 2 – You are
the daughter of a tenant. You pushed the door of an old-fashioned mill and it
got opened; you walked in and took your place near the door.
There was a gigantic
tough-looking man with cocky attitude saw and barked at you roughly, “what do
you want?”
Meekly, you replied,”
My mommy says send her fifty rupees.”
“I’ll not do it,” the
man retorted, “Now you run on home.”
“Yes, sir,” you
replied. But you did not want to move.
The man went ahead
with his work, so busily engaged he did not notice that you had not left. When
he looked up and saw you still standing there. He yelled at you, “I told you to
go home! Now, go, or I’ll take a switch to you.”
You, a poor little
girl, said, “Yes, sir,” but you did not budge an inch.
He dropped a sack of
grain he was about to pour into the mill hopper, picked up a barrel stave and
started towards you with an expression on his face that indicated trouble. His
assistant held his breath and it seemed he was certain about to witness a
murder. As he knew, this man had a fierce temper.
When the man reaches
the spot where you are standing, ------- What will you do?
Our brain is like an ant. Our life and this world are like an
elephant. An ant, staying under the elephant, cannot notice the elephant
completely. The ant could view a part of it. Our brain may be like a
sharp-sighted ant but you cannot find answers for all our lives’ puzzles.
It doesn’t mean that you should adjust and live like a
slipper irrespective of others’ whips and beatings. There is something called
‘Assertive’.
Let’s look at that first situation. The common view is: ‘If you don’t run for your life, the monkeys
will attack and kill you forcefully.’ If you only run, the monkeys will keep
chasing you. It happened to Swami
Vivekananda. He was instructed by a random monk “Don’t run. Stand against
them.” His words were received by Swamy Vivekananda as god’s words. He stopped
and stand against those monkeys. They too stopped. He stepped forward and they
started going backward. He took one more step faster with greater confidence,
they ran in different directions for their lives.
In the second situation, He reached the spot where the child
was standing, she quickly stepped forward one step, looked up into his eyes and
screamed at the top of her shrill voice, ‘MY MAMMY’S GOTTA HAVE THAT FIFTY
RUPEES!”.
The man stopped, looked at her for a minute, then slowly laid
the barrel stave on the floor, put his hand in his pocket, took out fifty
rupees and gave it to her. The child took the money and slowly backed towards
the door, never taking her eyes off the man whom she had just conquered. After
she had gone, the man sat down on a box and looked out the window into space
for more than 10 minutes. He was pondering, with awe, on the whipping he had
just taken. That was the first time; the assistant happened to see the child
deliberately mastered an adult authority figure.
Be assertive – don’t leave your rights for the sake of
anything. Don’t let any authority or any stranger to dominate or take control
under your jurisdiction.
Remember “Strength is life; Weakness is death”
-Swami Vivekananda
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