Have you ever wondered: People are so busy giving the Right answer forgetting that the question itself may be wrong?
Well, the conditioning that our environment does to us is such that we start playing to the rhetoric without actually thinking why?
So examples are:
We may call FPS as FPS Shipping and CSS as CSS Shipping, in-spite of the S already taking care of the word shipping.
Or
We may all ensure that we have medical insurance but never ensure that we have a healthy life by eating and living well
Or
We may constantly be seeing our emails or phones or Whatsapp without actually any urgency on anything
Or
We all want to become market leaders or come 1st in whatever we do.
Ahh, the last example is interesting. Coming 1st or the obsession with the 1st position or being on top at number 1.
Isn’t that what we all are trying to do sub consciously and isn’t that why we have most of the stress and emotional problems in life. The society is sub consciously celebrating anything and anybody who is at number 1 and therefore we all think by pursuing the number 1 position, we will get the self-esteem and self-worth we all are looking for.
But today we will sit back and check if the effort is worth the pain.
The quest to get to the top or number 1 brings out several poisons and i can enumerate as follows:
a) It gives birth to “Competition” – when you want to run a race, since positions are all relative numbers and nothing in absolute terms, you have to become competitive. What this does to you is it makes you a person who becomes relative to his environment and not in harmony with it. So with each other thing or person, you will try to find your relative standing and stop seeking to know how you stand in harmony with it.
b) Next poison that comes out is “Insecurity” – when you start viewing everything in relative terms , you will get insecure about yourself. In absolute terms you are secure because nature has given you a harmonious position and not a relative position. But your eyes with which you view have become relative so you think you are insecure even though you are secure. Got it?
c) Now armed with high “competitiveness” and “insecurity” and a vision “to be 1st “, you are totally out of context with the ways of existence and have created a parallel world in your mind. And now, whatever, whoever and whatsoever comes in the way of you gaining your relative position in the world, you view it as “enemy”, “obstacle” or “challenge.”
d) Then come some so called leaders (who are nothing but victims of the same thought process and have accumulated some wealth or what they think is “intelligence” but lack basic premise clarity) and they tell the young: overcome all competition, obstacles and challenges in LIFE.
By the way, keeping money small in life is a part of thinking big. And here you have some profiteers giving lessons on LIFE. Laughable isn’t it?
e) Then the pursuit starts and it never ends, till you end or die or give up. Because it is a race no one wins. At every pedestal, you realise, i am so tired and yet there is so much to go. Because the flaw is the way you view things and not how things really are.
Ok, let’s say, a lucky few reach the TOP, at number 1 Or 1st position. Now what? Now, as all movies, enters the real villain. And that is the number Zero.
You have never thought about it but read now:
a. Even if you come 1st, you are still behind Zero.
b. Zero is so humble that it is never visible to any.
c. Zero is so powerful, that if it stands behind anyone, it can add tremendous multiples of value to it.
d. Zero in itself is free of all the poisons mentioned like competition, insecurity etc. I mean how much incrementally insecure can one get when one is already a Zero.
Now look and compare the person who has after all the effort come 1st. He is still behind Zero. He is only 1st and has nowhere to go now. He needs to preserve his 1st position all his life now and live in high insecurity. Not Zero. 1st position is actually a jail. From where you just can’t fail. But Zero is free, independent and can stand where it wants to. It stands before you and stands after you. You are actually nothing. It is Zero who decides what you are.
So my dear friends, next time you “PRAY” and ask god for something, pray that he makes you a Zero. Because as you have rightly realised by now, Zero is the ultimate superhero!
Practical tip: As easy as it sounds, it is most difficult to become a Zero. So my suggestion is for now, you aim for number 3 or beyond. Because number 2 is always HURT that he lost to number 1 by a fraction. And number 1, all of you know, is in a jail, insecure and highly protective of his relative position. Number 3 or 4 are relatively more comfortable. Relaxed, Living, Breathing.
Breathe. Hope you are?
Rahat Talreja
Vice President – CSS India
rahat@cssindiagroup.com