Where do we lose the battle? - Disillusionment

Heroism inspires people. When we listen to the incredible story of Benaiah, who chased a lion on a snowy day into a pit and killed the lion, we are inspired. Or when we hear the three stories from the life of Steve Jobs, our hearts are moved and minds stirred. We will be challenged to fight our own battle with fierce courage and achieve what Benaiah or Steve did. These stories challenge us to become champions by staying hungry and foolish. Deep inside we want to be like them and do something monumental with our own lives. Therefore immediately, we make resolutions to imitate our heroes and follow the path they have taken and become victorious in our battles.

While some of us do taste success, many of us face bitter experience of failure. There might be thousand reasons for our failures. It could be lack of preparation; it might be wrong timing, or it could be incorrect method of execution and the list can go on. Many are disappointed or disheartened and they give up too soon. Some will try to follow through, but if they hit the wall more than once, they too conclude they are not hero material and that they are not made for this.

I suspect our resolutions weaken mainly for two reasons. In our pursual to achieve something great, we expect and wait for that one big opportunity that Steve Jobs, or David or Benaiah encountered in their own lives. Trouble is we ignore small opportunities every day. Trust me that big opportunity is never going to come to you, unless you use today’s small opportunity. Secondly, we are unwilling to change our status quo and risk something. Until we risk disrupting our present state and take the first step towards our dream we are not going anywhere.

As we begin to experience failures in our attempts to follow the footsteps of our heroes, the resolutions that are made at the beginning start to wither away. The initial fire, vigour, and passion dry up. We feel disillusioned and defeated. Some of us even feel we are cheated into imitating our heroes. As we cool down, and our fire turns lukewarm, our 'response-ability' gets toned down next time we hear same heroic act. That is, we don’t respond the same way we did at the beginning. Even though a person might be willing to learn from a story, the passion to put it into practice is washed up in failures.

Let me summarize what I have been exploring so far in last four posts. Adventures, heroism, courageous acts of our ancestors impact us to a great extent. They are needed and they need to be heard frequently. Sometimes in repeated hearing the effect gets lost. The effect caused by David’s epic battle with Goliath can be rationalised or played down showing the divine involvement as the source of success; Inspirations emanating from those stories can be ignored through indifference developed by our familiarity with the story; and repeated failures, in our attempts to live upto the challenges thrown at us by those heroic acts, can water down our resolutions and leave us disillusioned.

So what is the solution? How can we overcome these disadvantages and actually do something and inch closer to the elite club of achievers like David, Joseph, Peter or Paul?

Let me propose, what I believe are most effective, steps we need to take or skills we need to develop. They sound familiar but then they are sound.

1.       Unlearn ‘I Know’ attitude

2.       Risk the chance of failure

3.       Live one day at a time.

I'd like to take you through all of three of them in next few posts. Till then don’t let the fire go down.

“Your biggest competitor is your own view of future” – The Visionary’s Handbook

Should We or Not? - Stories - Heroes

Few days back Josh, a friend of mine, posted an intriguing comment on his facebook page. “How long do we read about people like David, Benaiah, and Peter and feel good about what they did? Aren’t we called to be part of that league? Let's do something "worth His calling" with our life!”

Honestly, this comment has a resounding truth in it. Whether he made it with an encouraging tone or exasperated tone, it is something worth pondering. We can’t sit on our own comfortable chairs and do the ‘bhajans’ of those who chased lions all our lives; and yet at the same time shriek away from our own lions. Sooner or later we will inevitably get bored of listening to the same story and there is always a lurking danger of developing indifference towards those courageous acts of our heroes.

Therefore our primary question is, should we or should we not listen to the stories of heroes of the Bible?

In my personal opinion, the courageous acts of yesterday’s heroes are inspirations for today’s generation. They become useful if we ‘learn’ from them, they are useless if we just ‘listen’ to them.

Reading or listening to monumental acts of Benaiah, three thousand years ago, can bring a sense of amazement and a sense of incredulity. One man single handed chases a lion on a snowy day into a pit and kills it, with or without weapon. The story has a ‘too good to be true’ ring to it. And yet it is a true incident. A boy takes on a giant, four times taller and heavier, with a sling and a stone; a fisher man walks on water; three young men walk into a fiery furnace and walk out without a scratch. All these stories are unbelievable, but they are true, historical and authentic. No matter how many times we talk about them, they are still going to cause some wonder in some body at some point of recollection.

Psychologists say, a person needs to hear at least sixteen times for anything to turn into a belief. Therefore repetition is necessary. That is the reason, we repeatedly hear and learn the same things over and over again in different ways from the time we join nursery till we graduate from a university. My point is, not only we need to consider what our heroes have done in past but we must also hear them frequently.

Hearing these courageous acts of past has its own advantages, first of all we will always find some revelation of the character of God; we also find inspiration from them to face our own horrors; we might even end up learning few tricks for ourselves in lion hunting. Virtues like faith, courage, patience and honor are always present. These heroes will pop into our minds at right moments to fill us with hope. They are definitely beneficial and valuable.

I strongly believe there are also certain disadvantages, let me put them in simple terms. By hearing heroic stories repeatedly, our sense of wonder diminishes; our desire to learn from them weakens and our resolution to imitate them withers away over time.

So, I think the question is not really, should we or should we not talk about past heroes, or how many times are we suppose to talk about them. But the real question is, are we learning or just listening?

I plan to explore on the reasons behind these loses and find some practical solution for our predicament in the next installment.