Skip to main content

Behold the Beauty


Dale Carnegie gave us the parable of the two men who looked out from prison bars. “One saw the mud, the other saw stars.” What we see is often our choice. We can choose to see the mud or we can choose to look at the sky.

There was once a man who had a dog. He used a strategy for bathing the dog. He would take the dog to the river and throw a ball into the river. Being trained to fetch the ball whenever it was thrown, the dog would jump into the river too and fetch the ball. That swimming would be the dog’s bath. But one day the dog sprang a surprise. When the master threw the ball, the dog, instead of swimming, walked on the water to fetch it. The master was surprised. He threw the ball once again and the dog walked on water again. Maybe, it was an evolutionary step in the dog’s life.

The master wanted to show off this to his neighbour. So he asked his neighbour to accompany him to the river. The ball was thrown and the dog fetched it by walking on the river. The neighbour made no reaction. It was as if nothing extraordinary had happened. The man repeated the exercise. Still no reaction from the neighbour.

“Didn’t you notice anything special about my dog?” The man asked.

“Yeah, the silly creature doesn’t know how to swim.” That was the neighbour’s response.

The neighbour’s perceptions were conditioned as are most people’s. A dog had to swim if it entered into a river. Otherwise, it is a silly creature.

We have certain built-in notions which affect most of our perceptions and judgements. Many of these notions may be plainly wrong. Hence our perceptions and judgements will be wrong too. We fail to see miracles that actually happen around us.

Some 2000 years ago, Greek philosopher Epictetus said, “People are disturbed not by events, but by the views they take of them.” Our ‘views’ are conditioned by our inbuilt notions. Our emotional responses are the consequences of the interaction between the event that happens and our notions or beliefs about them. Life can be a lot sweeter if we keep checking our inbuilt notions/beliefs every now and then.

PS. This post is part of #BlogchatterA2Z 2023

Yesterday's: Authenticity

Tomorrow: Capitalism is fated to be sad

Comments

  1. Yes, sometimes we choose to see the glass as half empty rather than half full.Good one.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. How we see matters more sometimes than what we see.

      Delete
  2. Wow! I really liked the analogy about the Dog. Perception as you say is very different for different people. When we are born we have no preconceptions about anything and our minds see things as they are. But life creates prejudices and we start perceiving things as per our views.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Some prejudices are understandable. But most people seem to have only prejudices.

      Delete
  3. This is true….it is the way u perceive things…it’s like the number 6 to those who look at the number upside down sees the number 9…they can argue all day that it’s a 9 and not a six until they change their perspective on their view. Life is based on perception and YOU chose your perception.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Reality is a lot more complex, however, than 6 vs 9.

      Delete
  4. I was just reading a movie dialogue that said I choose to fight by seeing the good and you choose to fight by seeing the ugly. In the end we're both trying to survive but your way is not "better". The dog story was so good!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Hari OM
    Ah yes, perceptions and perspective; so much a part of any narrative! YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
  6. Yep. So many factors condition us to the world around us. Self censoring is a constant state of mind, till it isn't...

    ReplyDelete
  7. Oops, the above was me! Don't know how that happened 😅

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks for telling it's you :) Anonymity is associated with cowardice.

      Self-censoring is a painful affair especially in a world of frauds. I know I'm being judgemental when I speak about frauds. But tragically I see too many of them around me. Not only in politics. Alas!

      Delete
  8. Replies
    1. Yes, response should come instead of reaction. Judiciousness instead of judgement. Let's hope.

      Delete
  9. Beautifully summed up about how we can change our state of mind by looking inwards !

    ReplyDelete
  10. I love how this is explained. Yes, that is the beauty of life, how you perceive it. Isn't it strange that two people look at the same things differently. And I also love what your first letter A was authenticity! So was mine :)

    ReplyDelete
  11. This post reminded me of the time we went appartment hunting. The appartment was on 19th floor and had lovely views of the sea. But hubby's colleague who also saw the appartment, didnt stretch his eyes until the horizon...his eyes fell directly down where there was a graveyard. :) ...like you said...perception...I saw the horizon, he saw the graveyard

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You've given me a point to ponder on, Harshita. I have always wondered how the Ambanis live happily in their Antilia which towers like a vulgar palace amid residences that don't even have proper water supply. Maybe, your hubby's colleague had a point. Still.. I'm thinking.

      Delete
  12. Well put. I see that kids are unconditioned and their sense of wonder helps see beauty in everything than us, the adults with so much conditioning. And parenting has helped me to some extent to unlearn and have better perceptions & perspectives.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes, parents and teachers can do a lot in this regard.

      Delete
  13. Yeah, there are some people, as the man in your story, who boasts about the stupid things and expects the same from others. It's difficult to deal with them. I try hard these days not to respond to them for the sake of peace.

    ReplyDelete
  14. Showing off the dog 's ability to walk on water is also borne out of flawed perception. A perception which instigates us to flaunt and secure fame even at the expense odour loved ones. I presume here that the dog was loved by his master.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Parables are highly focused on their morals. This wasn't about the showoff.

      Delete
  15. Our ‘views’ are conditioned by our inbuilt notions. 👏🏻💯

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. And that's the only way available now. Unfortunately.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

The Second Crucifixion

  ‘The Second Crucifixion’ is the title of the last chapter of Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins’s magnum opus Freedom at Midnight . The sub-heading is: ‘New Delhi, 30 January 1948’. Seventy-three years ago, on that day, a great soul was shot dead by a man who was driven by the darkness of hatred. Gandhi has just completed his usual prayer session. He had recited a prayer from the Gita:                         For certain is death for the born                         and certain is birth for the dead;                         Therefore over the inevitable                         Thou shalt not grieve . At that time Narayan Apte and Vishnu Karkare were moving to Retiring Room Number 6 at the Old Delhi railway station. They walked like thieves not wishing to be noticed by anyone. The early morning’s winter fog of Delhi gave them the required wrap. They found Nathuram Godse already awake in the retiring room. The three of them sat together and finalised the plot against Gand

The Final Farewell

Book Review “ Death ends life, not a relationship ,” as Mitch Albom put it. That is why, we have so many rituals associated with death. Minakshi Dewan’s book, The Final Farewell [HarperCollins, 2023], is a well-researched book about those rituals. The book starts with an elaborate description of the Sikh rituals associated with death and cremation, before moving on to Islam, Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and finally Hinduism. After that, it’s all about the various traditions and related details of Hindu final rites. A few chapters are dedicated to the problems of widows in India, gender discrimination in the last rites, and the problem of unclaimed dead bodies. There is a chapter titled ‘Grieving Widows in Hindi Cinema’ too. Death and its rituals form an unusual theme for a book. Frankly, I don’t find the topic stimulating in any way. Obviously, I didn’t buy this book. It came to me as quite many other books do – for reasons of their own. I read the book finally, having shelv

Vultures and Religion

When vultures become extinct, why should a religion face a threat? “When the vultures died off, they stopped eating the bodies of Zoroastrians…” I was amused as I went on reading the book The Final Farewell by Minakshi Dewan. The book is about how the dead are dealt with by people of different religious persuasions. Dead people are quite useless, unless you love euphemism. Or, as they say, dead people tell no tales. In the end, we are all just stories made by people like the religious woman who wrote the epitaph for her atheist husband: “Here lies an atheist, all dressed up and no place to go.” Zoroastrianism is a religion which converts death into a sordid tale by throwing the corpses of its believers to vultures. Death makes one impure, according to that religion. Well, I always thought, and still do, that life makes one impure. I have the support of Lord Buddha on that. Life is dukkha , said the Enlightened. That is, suffering, dissatisfaction and unease. Death is liberation

Cats and Love

No less a psychologist than Freud said that the “time spent with cats is never wasted.” I find time to spend with cats precisely for that reason. They are not easy to love, particularly if they are the country variety which are not quite tameable, and mine are those. What makes my love affair with my cats special is precisely their unwillingness to befriend me. They’d rather be in their own company. “In ancient time, cats were worshipped as gods; they have not forgotten this,” Terry Pratchett says. My cats haven’t, I’m sure. Pratchett knew what he was speaking about because he loved cats which appear frequently in his works. Pratchett’s cats love independence, very unlike dogs. Dogs come when you call them; cats take a message and get back to you as and when they please. I don’t have dogs. But my brother’s dogs visit us – Maggie and me – every evening. We give them something to eat and they love that. They spend time with us after eating. My cats just go away without even a look af