We Indians are well-known for our style of greeting others. We bow our head, & press our hands together; I noticed that we pray like this too.
We greet the god in the others when we meet them. That’s the greatness of our culture. We are taught to be humble since we are born. However there’s a great difference between choose to be humble & passively being humble.
If I go to a terrorist & ask him to surrender, practically I can be called a fool. Yes, I deserve that. I am trying to be polite when I don’t have any other choice. I am not choosing to be polite; I am bound to be polite.
I see practically most of us living with this rule. We think it’s our culture & greatness to be polite. Yes it is, but not, when we don’t have any other choice. How can I make a choice when practically I don’t have any choice?
I was taught that even a God like Rama bowed to Ocean to give him path, that’s our greatness & culture. I agree that is Lord Rama’s beautiful character & strength. We should follow him for that. But According to Ramayna , ocean refused & Lord Rama then took out an arrow to make his own way, Rama had a choice. 9 out of 10 of us, If given a bow; strong enough to vaporize the whole ocean; we wont request it first, to give us way. We will threaten it to give us way. That’s the character strength of Rama. He had the choice but still he was humble. He chose to be humble when he could choose effectively not to be.
Now If I would be in place of Rama & I bowed in front of the ocean to give me path. Can you call it my strength or greatness? No you won’t & you shouldn’t. I would be having no choice. So I would be doing what I could.
A person having that arrow to dry the ocean & me is left with practically no difference. He’s doing what he can do & I am doing what I can!!!
Being humble is only great when you choose it & can choose not to be. If you have to be polite & have no other choice. You can be called effective, practical & cowardly but for sure you cannot be called great & that’s what we used to be. We were Great not coward.
Be mighty before being polite. That’s the key & that’s what we had been doing since centuries.
Arpit
1 comment:
true one... we cannot make our cultural teaching of humbleness an excuse for being polite when we have no other options. i read it during school days and never forgot "kshama shobti us bhujang ko jiske paas garal ho, usko kya jo dantheen, vishrahit, vineet, saral ho!" sorry i can't put it in devanagari script :(
Post a Comment