It was a small narrow road.
Only one bus can pass through that road at any one time.
When the bus I was in turned into that road, there was another bus trying to enter the same road from the opposite direction.
When the driver of the other bus noticed this, he braked and drove the bus backwards making way for our bus.
After our bus drove down the slope, he drove up.
Both of them saved time and went ahead with their journeys with a good peace of mind.
Happy end.
Now assume, the bus driver felt that going backward as a form of defeat. He thought ‘Why should I go backward? I also have equal right. I will go forward. Let him go back’ and continued accelerating.
Strangely the other bus driver also felt the same thing.
Both reached the centre of the road and kept honking at the other to go back.
Each felt that they were giving a tough fight to the other and wanted to win.
However, the reality was,
- By doing this both of them lost lot of time.
- Due to the constant honking and abuses, they lost peace of mind.
- Someone recorded this and put on Quora, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. It went viral and both of them lost jobs.
So when do you waste your life?
When you focus only on your fighting skill and keep fighting for hours, completely forgetting about what you are going to win by doing that fight.
It happens in our everyday lives.
- Someone ridicules your elemnentary French. You want to prove to him that you are stronger than him. You practise for weeks, forgetting your work and learn a language that is going to be of no use to you.
- Someone insults you. You spend months planning to pay him back and make him suffer.
- Someone says you don’t have knowledge in particular topic that is going to be of no use or interest to you. You keep studying it for hours and finally prove him that you know it.
All these are illusory wars that start because your ego is hurt and your thinking is numbed. You are dragged to the war-field and you keep fighting.
And finally after long sweaty-and-bloody war, you sit down and realise what you have earned. Strangely, Nothing.
In fact, you have only wasted a lot of your valuable time and energy for that one person who was of no importance to you.
Sometimes, it is good to let go of it.
Sometimes, it is good to not bother about things that are only going to halt your progress.
What you win is more important than whether you have fought for it or not.
Vijay Sethupathi said in one of his famous interviews—
If I get hurt, I know where to show my ego.
I tell people around me. If someone hurts your ego, don’t show it to him. He is going to die some day. What is the point in proving your ego to him. Instead show it in your work. If you do that, you will grow. Once you grow, he will automatically be invisible to your eyes. He will get lost in the crowd that looks at you in awe.
Instead, if you keep fighting with him, you are going to be at his level forever. You are only wasting you life in this process.
-Srinath Nalluri
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