Ignore The Ignorant

Somone very close to us tends to share almost everything with us. Be it one’s desires, achievements, interactions with others, problems, plans, etc. We also share the same with our closed ones. This closeness comes with mutual understanding and must remain as long as a mutual phenomenon exists.

Consider a situation when a person who is a close friend of yours starts behaving differently. He is no longer interested in any of your affairs. He brags his previous achievements. He entices you towards his desires, imposes his decisions on you and hence diluting your own goals from your vision. Consequently, at a certain point of time, you overlook your own goals that were once set firm by you and were indispensable for your growth. But now your friend puts small achievable goals before you that slightly exhilarate you but lead you astray from your own goals.

On one fine day, you realize that your fortitude is getting eroded with every new accomplishment. Your ingrained enthusiasm is also getting faded day by day. Those small goals that once were alluring seem baits to encage you. You compulsively proceed to complete those tasks even if you are not willing to. It’s not difficult to extrapolate that your close friend is indeed your adversary. But he is so close that you cannot duel with him for many reasons. What if you cannot keep him at a distance.

Coming back to reality, there is at least one such close friend of ours who sometimes becomes our enemy. And that is our mind. It implicates us in its plays. It creates its plays and invites us for participation for instant or quick gratification. But these plays are energy devouring. If we participate in its plays, it consumes all our spirits. These plays induce strong addiction and we get trapped in a vicious circle of doing such activities repeatedly.

 For instance, you had been preparing for your competitive exams for 1 year. You took the preliminary exam and scored well in it. For Mains exams, you were given 2 months. You were very confident to crack that exam. Here the trick came into play. Despite good preparation, you somehow lose the grip in the midway of preparation and developed a new interest in social media platforms and mobile gaming and hence compromised your revision habit that was imperative for speed and better retention of concepts that you were studying. The use of social media gave you a sense of gratification. With every new notification on your smartphone, you indulged in such activities hereby reducing your retention and study time. That way, you were nearer to social media than to your dreams. Hence your performance in the final exam was unsatisfactory. You failed by 10 marks. The mind tricked you and played its game. That instant gratification derived from gaming and social media activities costed a lot to you.

The mind is usually ignorant of our own goals. It seeks for quick gratification if left unguided. So, stay awake towards your goals and ignore the ignorant. Ignore it and its goals too. They can discourage you from stepping forward to your path and obstruct your progress.

 

© Adarsh Kumar Patel