Sometimes you are going about ordinary errands and as your mind ruminates it stumbles upon some valuable realizations. Mondays there is a farmers market that gathers in a park near my home in Pune. I like to do my weekly vegetable shopping there. Yesterday was no different. Around 9:30 am I walked there, picked some things that I needed and was walking back home. Mind was in a bit of a discomfort thinking about how I lack many social skills to navigate relationships, particularly in larger groups and sometimes in one on one situations. I was probably brooding over a recent incident with a beloved cousin. He patched up last week after over six months of cutting ties with me, for some reason that he alone knows and refuses even now to disclose or discuss. I am left in the dark wondering what did I do or say to upset him that much.
Suddenly it dawned upon me that no one in the world can have every skill or aptitude. Even the greatest of scientists or poets or painters or even saints may not be endowed with all social skills. What is important to have is kindness in the heart. If you have compassion and respect for others everything else will be ok. Lack of other skills can be forgiven. Hence just focus on harboring empathy in the heart at all times. Don’t be too harsh on yourself if you are not good at everything. That’s perfectly human.
I am writing this down so I remind myself of it again and again when my personal fallacies begin to prick me like thorns.
Picture is a bird I saw in Bicholim Goa earlier this month. Using it as a metaphor for the mind that is not steady for much time. It keeps flying from one thought to another, one worry to another, one emotion to another. It needs a stabilizing presence to quieten and stay focused on what really matters.
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