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

Where do we lose the battle? – Loss of Wonder

(Continued from previous post "Should we or not? Stories -Heroes" - Chaitanya)

Heroic acts of yesterday cause inspiration and bring hope to our own everyday battles. While it is necessary for us to hear them on a repeated basis, in order to develop faith in God and build confidence in ourselves, there is also a danger of losing the heat in the process of repetition. I believe we lose our zeal to become lion chasers, and join the elite achiever’s club, as we allow the heat to simmer down.

For example, our reaction to a courageous act of a hero changes from the first time to every other time we hear it. The first time I read the story of a plowman, Shamgar, who used his ox goad to kill six hundred soldiers of philistine, I was amazed. But by the time it was repeated three times I lost the original admiration. As I discussed in my previous post, repetition of heroic stories has its own disadvantages. I laid down three of them, and I would like to explore them one by one.

The primary disadvantage is our sense of wonder diminishes. How do we lose our sense of wonder?

I think, our sense of wonder diminishes, primarily for two reasons. One is the explanation of the reasonability of a given event and other is the acceptance of the supernatural involvement in an incident. Let me explicate.

As children, every time we hear about how we have come out of our mother’s tiny womb, our minds are filled with wonder. Our eyes swell, mouths gape, and hearts pound at the incredulity of such a thing. As we grow, we learn and understand the human anatomy, we gain knowledge on the reproduction process of human species. I think that’s when the marvel of it all gets lost, in the reasonability of a baby’s birth process. You can explain it away!

The death of a giant in the hand of a teenage boy with a single sling shot will definitely raise astonishment. As the story gets repeated, we start explaining away the courage of David. This guy encountered several other perils as a shepherd boy even before he became a giant killer. He probably could kill the giant in the first attempt, because he became an expert sling shot. He had practice protecting his sheep from wolves and bears. That explanation steals the thundering feel of the story. We then conclude an act like that is possible, reasonable, and therefore achievable. Its greatness is lost. That exactly is my point, reducing a heroic act in to rational explanation can diminish the ‘wonder effect’. Our minds start rationalizing everything we hear repetitively.

The miracle of an axe head floating on water, with a simple, faith filled prayer of Elisha is simply unbelievable. Once it is established as a historical fact then the trouble starts. Anything out of ordinary will catch our attention. Floating axe head is extraordinary. Our initial response is to question the reliability of the story, once it is authenticated, the predictable conclusion would be the presence of supernatural element in it. Then the tendency for us is to think, since it is not our typical everyday happening, and there is a transcendent power involved; should I expect that power to get involved in the problems of my own tiny world? Is not, my life too small for something like that to happen on everyday basis.

A conclusion of this sort will pinch the cherishing feel of that event. Though the event itself has spectacular in it, eventually we ramble about the impracticality of anything spectacular happening in our own lives.

Did you see my point? Both, explaining away the reasonability of an event or focusing only on the  supernaturality of an event, naturally results in loss of Wonder.

Tomorrow we shall dig deeper…