The Wind and The Sun

Dear Loving People,

I know I have too often talked about the importance to stay FOCUSED on your goals and to create meaning in your life by aiming at one goal at a time and making sure you get it. Part of the downside of this doctrine has been that many people get to misrepresent it and some of the times become fanatical.

Now, part of staying focused on your dream is finding the right fit. We must strike the right balance within us on our path to success by accepting that some of the roads we take lead us to nowhere and so we need to correct course by at time taking a completely new road that will lead us to destination.

What I mean is that we must have a burning desire to have what we want and thus, take action in the physical world in order to get it. At the same time, we cannot stick to such desires or that particular thing we want as though our entire existence depended uniquely on getting it. Don’t get me wrong here, in the same way as you wouldn't stick to one specific option throughout life, you cannot permit yourself to stick unto what you want only. Unquestionably, you want it so bad, and that's perfectly alright, but you must be willing to let go of what you want so bad and especially the way you want to get it and be very ready to move on to something else as easily as a monkey moving from branch to branch in the same forest looking for fruits to eat.

Let me use this beautiful childhood story to elucidate this model. One morning in a hilly tropical African country, the Sun and the Wind were having a friendly chat. They started by listing their accomplishments on earth and got into a disagreement about who was the most powerful between them. The Wind pointed to a man walking down a hillside on his way home.

“Whoever can get that man to remove his coat faster will be proclaimed the most powerful and the other should respect him,” said the excited Wind. Sun thoughtfully agreed, nodding his head. Wind in his eagerness to prove himself right started first. Wind mobilized a stormy blast of dust. He pumped it at the man’s face. The man leaned into the oncoming blast, and wrapped his coat around himself even tighter. The harder that Wind tried to get the man to remove his coat, the tighter he held onto his coat. Eventually and after what seemed eternity, the wind puffed a breath of total exhaustion and said, “I blackout! I don’t know what you plan on doing, but good luck with it! Goodness! That man really adores his coat and nothing can take it from him.”

“Don’t conclude just yet” said the smiling sun. As he smiled, his rays flashed over the beautiful hills giving them a golden color and cleansing them with a roasting glow. Sun kept on shining while the man kept walking down the slope. In a few minutes, he felt the heat of Sun reaching through the coat, all the way down enveloping his body. Without thinking, he removed his coat, and draped it over his shoulder, as he walked home, whistling a chirpy African tune and wiping the sweat that was damping his face from time to time. Wind gave Sun a contemptuous look and departed without a word while Sun smiled to himself.

The moral to this story is straightforward; force makes only an effort where gentleness achieves results. More to it, the more we become attached to a specific outcome, the harder we try to make that outcome work. This blinds our critical minds from realizing that we are using the same inconsequential tactics that weren't working before. The wind worked and worked and worked and still got the same result, nothing. In physics, we would describe that as energy wasted, no work done (W = F x D). The sun, with a little bit of effort in the right way, and with no attachment to things being a certain way was able to get the results necessary.

We need to remember that we have to stay focused on our goals and what we want to achieve, but we equally have to be very careful not to create a barrier inside our minds and hearts that has to have things a specific way. Put the desire and passion into what you want, and open yourself up to possibilities and opportunities. It will be a much more rewarding experience emotionally and physically.