I have been thinking these days about my performance in the workplace and sometimes I have periods when I feel that I have failed to perform my job successfully. The criteria for measuring success, of course, varies from person to person, but this sense of failure arises from my own self-judgment. However, today it occurred to me that only we humans have concepts like success and failure.
Take a lion for instance. It spots a bunch of deer and being hungry decides to hunt. After much stalking and preparing, it makes the attack, Deer, being nimble, scatter immediately and so begins the chase. Usually the lion wins, because its superior stamina outruns agility. But sometimes it so happens, that it does not catch up and the prey escapes. Does the lion sit down and analyse its own performance, does it mentally beat itself for pausing a second longer/ not taking a short cut / not going after an older deer, or does it just go ahead in search of its next source of food? Sounds so much more sensible.
Or yonder mango tree which has not produced any fruit this year? Does it bemoan its fate? Consider itself a failure of a mango tree? Or blame the bees and birds for not doing a good job of pollinating? Or blame the weather? Or humans? Or does it just stay calm and continue to put forth leaves and flowers, as if nothing happened, content in its own beingness?
Are we not part of nature too? Then why do we stray from beingness? Attach meaning to everything, analyse and postulate and feel guilty / happy until our being is buried under all this baggage and we cannot even feel its presence anymore. Dependent on external factors like outcomes to make us feel good. If we are in beingness, like the lion and the tree, wouldn’t our being prompt us to think and act in ways that are most appropriate to the situation, like hunting when hungry and putting forth flowers during spring. Wouldn’t all activity then become effortless (by which I don’t mean inactivity)?
Our own higher self is the best guide of all, it knows not success or failure, it does not even know effort, it only recognizes intention. If you follow its guidance, your intention will always be pure and strong, and your actions will always be right ones, and the results of those actions will not bother you.
