A young farmer is covered with sweat as he paddles on his boat to the river to deliver his produce to the village. While he was on his way and tried to get home before dark, he noticed a boat was going his way headed rapidly downstream.
So he shouted “Change direction you’re going to hit me! ”
But to no avail.
The vessel hit his boat with a violent “Thud”.
“You idiot! how did you manage to hit my boat in this wide river?!” Furious, he glared into the boat seeking for the individual responsible for the damage. He realized after observing through the mist, no one was there.
He had been screaming on an empty boat that had broken from its rope and was floating aimlessly.
When things don’t go our way, when we feel attacked or when we reap the negative consequences of our circumstance, our first instinct is to find blame on others that has the participation in the situation. While this may help you cope with the stress, or alleviate the blame from your conscience. In a number of cases, you are expecting responsibility on an empty boat.
The only thing that you are in control of is yourself. The easiest reaction is to look on others and throw responsibility out the window. It takes maturity to focus first on self. Think how different things would happen if introspection happened first: What are the lessons you can learn? What are the things you can accept? And what are the things you can improve?
Rather that keeping on pursuing what others have done to you or what the circumstance have molded you to be. Focus on being the flexible child you once were. Keep learning.
The only thing that can make you any less than happy is yourself. All else is but a trigger to your own reaction to lose control of your well being. If you treat everyone as an empty boat: living beings with no ill will against you but only a continuous flow of energy – you’d realize the only entity that can change your outlook is ultimately just you.
1 comment
Benj
Awesome post. Just what I needed because of what’s been happening recently.