Our Perspective – Our Truth

 

PERCEPTION IS ONLY A TRUTH TO ONESELF

An incident happened to me few days back, when I went to a small shop to buy vegetables. We did the exchange of money and vegetables. I was about to return when I noticed that the shopkeeper was struggling with his laptop. Honestly, I smiled at first as I was happy to see a shopkeeper operating an electronic gadget like laptop. I asked him then, “Uncle, can I help you?”. He said, “Thank you Deekra, but I have already called the one who developed this to resolve this issue”. I should not but asked out of curiosity, “Developed what?”. He smiled and said, “I am launching my website to book orders and will start home delivery of vegetables.”

I was happily shocked as I knew that Uncle since few years when he started his business on literally a very small scale. I said, “Best wishes for your online presence, Uncle 😊. But can I ask you what made you travel so long?” He laughed and answered, “The same reason what made us stay at home for 8+ months. Life happens to be weird sometimes. I struggled a lot for these 8 months. I lost many things but not my hope and patience. Instead of leaving it, I started living with it and so searching an alternate way to run my business with my website.”

While many of us are still criticizing these 8 months, few people started building their empire out of it. This is what perception is all about. We take the truth with which we are presented to, but reality has much more to say than just this.

There is very famous story for this in our Vedas. On a divine day, God decided to send two leaves to earth and asked them to see the world while flowing with a river. Those two leaves were extremely delighted as they were to get a life to breath. Upon their arrival on earth and then on the river, the leaves commenced their journey in their own way. Leaf A decided to flow in the direction of river and leaf B did the opposite.

 Leaf A choose to flow in the direction of water just because it believed that it was heading this water and it is flowing as per its wish. Leaf B choose to oppose the normal flow of water because of its belief to change the natural course of action to establish supremacy. Leaf A somehow managed to reach to its destination and leaf B failed, due to self-explanatory reason. Upon their arrival back to God, it was obvious that Leaf B had nothing to justify. When God questioned Leaf A about his painful and dejected face, Leaf A answered, “Though I could reach my destination, I am unhappy with the struggles I had to overcome. I was going with the flow and even then, I had to suffer to get there. Why so?”.

God explained, “You suffered because your perception was wrong. You developed a perspective that you are the reason of water flowing in this direction which is not true. You got to that place, but you did not earn it and that is why you are unsatisfied. Earning has to do with the journey and getting it speaks only about destination.”

Once in an interview, Sushant Singh Rajput was asked a question as to who’s career, he would like to emulate. His answer is the best definition of perspective for me. He answered, “No ones. I would be happy if I will be what I want to be 20 years down the line. Just because if I emulate someone, I must constantly keep a check on me that am I following him/her correctly or not. I want to define me, not extend others.”

We are, these days not living by emotions or intuitions, but by perception. Our perspective on something or somebody does not expound them. The irony of our thought process is, we lift an individual to sky height (to solve even black hole theory) with just one achievement and we take no time in pulling them to ground if they cannot perform next day as per our wish. There are good and bad days in everybody’s life, but we cannot accept it somehow. There is absolutely no need of projecting our perception for someone in an ugly manner always. We must understand that there is a lot more an individual goes through than what he/she talks about. Speculating our perception as his/her identity will not change the fact. The universe does not operate on our axis.

To give an example, Virat Kohli was trolled or slammed by his own fans in social media, just because he took paternity leave instead of being on the field. I seriously do not understand how we can forget that he is a human first and then a professional. We never know how many sleepless nights, struggles, prayers, and desires would have consolidated in form his daughter. Alike MSD, if he would have chosen to be with the team instead of taking leave, that would have increased his respect manifolds. But not doing the same does not necessarily put him in wrong box. It just means that our expectation is not in line with his decision and that is okay. Personal happiness is not only for the family but even for self. We miss to understand that he is the same run machine and a chase master for India. If we have respect for him, we should think the reason behind his decision as well. If still its not working, accept it as their choice. Let us stop glamorizing professional achievements at the cost of personal happiness as a badge of honor. Even if one has to pay this cost, let’s not market it, to be it a trend.

Perception is finding a reason to respect and understand to bring life back in everything !