Stone, Water and Sponge
When I used to play sports in school, for the most part I sought ways of how I can defend or attack. It was mostly kabaddi. Every time a game begins, I kept dreaming of how many points I can gain or how many points I can hold back from our opponents - and how all of it would lead to my team’s victory. As always, I was too full-of-self. Team sports are won through everyone planning for the team win, not how individual’s 100% gives a win to the team. This I need to realise time and time again in all aspects of my life.
For one, I lately realised I can’t jump all huddles by myself. Though that’s how movies show it - hero defeats the villain single handedly - our life doesn’t gave a ‘happily ever after’ end credits. Though we defeat our first villain, there are always stronger villains than this one, badder times than this day.
All that search for end makes us defend ourselves than being part of a group. Either it’s family, or it’s office, at some point we get fed up of fighting for everyone else but you and switch to defending yourself to the absolute extreme.
“I’m a better student than my friend” “I’m a better employee than my colleague” I could fall back on saying that’s how the competition is these days. You competing with every single one around you that you become a stone - rejecting everything.
But that is all how some people planted rules for short term growth. Some leaders see it as a win-win to create a competitive environment among teams or colleagues as one out works the other. But our strength is in working together for the same goal.
For one, you can’t live long in such harsh competition. At some point, either you give up, or you start bashing everyone. You either become a stone or water. You either try to become a rock, immovable and untouchable even by your friends, or water, seeping wherever there is gap between rocks ; You are hard to touch or wiggle away from the touch.
What we all should be are wet sponges - a bit of stone, a bit of water. This way if a wetter sponge gets into your group, you can share their water by learning, or if a drier sponge gets in, you teach your learnings with them. This also adds to the fact that you enjoy being with everyone, cause you don’t bash among stones.
I thought I was a sponge, later to realise all stones around me are moulding me into one of them. I don’t really hate them. Hate is for stones, sorrow is for water. I want to be a sponge of help. People might say I’m too harsh or too soft. Well, I’m me. Others only see one side of me at a time. I need not see only that side, or prove to them I have another side. I can be me looking from within. I can select what kind of a sponge I want to be and become one in time. In the process, who knows, I might meet a lot more people generous enough to help.