Consider yourself in your childhood. On one fine day, you are strolling and playing in a park as your daily habit. You stop there and stunned watching your friend on a bicycle. You gaze at him and then he offers you to ride. Timidly you get on and as per commands from your friend you slowly, timidly start paddling. Full of fear, being your first riding experience, you ride less and more cautiously keep your eyes on your friend accompanying you. The moment you think about falling down, your mind gets less diverted towards riding the cycle and more towards leaving it. All your fun has been gone due to fear.
When you leave riding, you think that you have done something miraculous and different which you never did before. You rode a machine which moves only with balance, without any support.
The very next day you again yearn to take a ride, the next day, the next day and again.....till you get some wounds, rashes and bruises learning self developed skill to ride the cycle in your own way, skills stunting on roads various ways. This is the way you get educated till your adolescence.
Few more days and you forget to be cautious and you ride it as easy as you walk. Now you have got perfection in riding a bike. This is the stage when you are eligible to be known as professional. Right? Perhaps because you are well known for riding a bike. You are adroit in it. And more or less you ride it at least once in a day. But can you think about your professionalism? Just retrospect once and remember all the changes you have got during your learning. Since now you have become professional, you have changed the style you commute from one place to another. You feel walking tedious now. A new word also appended with you: 'Pragmatic'. Pragmatism is something that keeps you paddling the bike when you are in a large mud filled puddle even when you see someone slipped in it and caught up in the mud. Your pragmatism goads you to continue your ride until you cross the puddle no matter if someone else is in trouble in front of you. You keep on riding since you know if you stop there to help, you too would be caught up there. This time you your professionalism bridle you and you keep on moving on your way.
Once I was entangled in a same situation and then one of my friend called me up and when he got to know about my problem he insisted me to be 'Professional, Practical and Social'. I was just perplexed hearing all these words together.
Thinking of bicycle and the puddle situation, can you be professional and social as well? Certainly not. This is a situation as kindling a candle with a match stick. As you have to sacrifice one stick in order to light the candle in order to get yourself enlightened and to end up darkness of your life. Now it is upon you whether you light a candle or waste a match stick. I feel that this is the time when you need to use your reasons and pragmatism to be 'Practical' in order to get out of the puddle of your problems, dragging out the failures inside you converting all your mourn in to eternal happiness. And yes, once you are out, you can also pull out someone else out of the puddle.
So, next time if you find any situation as being yourself caught up in puddle. Don't get baffled in between, use your reasons coupled with 'riding' skills learnt so far and think about what matters more to you. Is it Professionalism or Socialization? Choose the path which you think will provide you the eternal happiness and remember on thing that you can kindle a candle by burning a match stick but you hardly see anyone burning a candle to kindle a match stick.
Happy Riding..
