Monday, September 4, 2017

I

I woke up today to learn that India got a woman Defence Minister, Nirmala Sitharaman, and she is the first woman to hold a full time Defence Minister portifolio since Independence. The news also buzzed with her attribution of the rapid rise in position to 'cosmic grace’.

A few years ago when Narendra Modi had a thumping victory in 2014 general elections, even in his first ever speech inside the Parliament hall he said - Bhagvan ka Kripa hai, mein ne is chunaav ko jeet paaya. That is after hundreds of rallies, thousands of speeches, years of hard work and preparation, the Prime Minister finally says - I attribute my success to the Divine.

In both these cases, one sees that these personalities very happily chose not to take credit for themselves. One may call it humble, goody goody, down to earth etc etc. But what's the use of doing this? Why not beat their chest for their victories??

The answer is simple. They simply did not want their ego to takeover them. The moment this feeling of - 'I did this’, 'Only because of me this happened’, 'Without me it's not possible’ goes into the head, that's it!! The downfall begins. The word 'I’ is dangerous unless one knows what it is. I am not saying one shouldn't be happy about what they did, take a moment and reflect on the whole thing etc etc, but all I am saying is the I-ness aspect is one easy path to reverse all the fortunes. Thus, the two great personalities chose to simply attribute their victories to an unseen power, the unknown power, the infinity, God. In Hinduism, God is considered the infinite, and as infinite plus something is still infinite, a few credits to the infinity won't change it. The advantage though is, one can save their own Self without falling prey to their ego. And that again helps in achieving greater heights. And more credits, more offering to infinite and more growth, … and so on.

I’ve also seen that people attribute their failures squarely on someone else. They give credits of their success to solely themselves. Both of these approaches don't let them grow. Giving failures to others won't let them introspect where they went wrong, they don't think of growing themselves, fixing their own bugs, think out of the box to prevent a failure next time.
However, if the reverse is done, that is, give one's successes to others or even better, God, and own up the failures, I've seen people improve. They may be having a slow beginning, but their end success is guaranteed. And the whole journey is more peaceful.

3 comments :

Naveen said...

Good message there.
Nicely written Amruth.

Rama said...

You have expressed very clearly what happens when a person carries praise.

Natasha said...

The author has expressed the dichotomy of victory very well. The I-ism vs the we-ism and the attribution of a failure to someone else also rings true. A beautiful piece, AmA