IS NOT YOUR NEIGHBOR'S SUCCESS YOUR OWN?

Pic.: Rajiv Sharma

Some weeks ago, I stopped to have a roadside sandwich. Next to him, there was a tea vendor with his kettle. By the time, I asked for my cup, the kettle was empty. I needed tea desperately. So, I asked him innocently, “Where else can I get tea; I badly need it.”

The man gave me an indifferent look, and said nothing.

Then, I asked the same with the sandwich vendor.

The indifference was no different.

“Brother, I asked where else can I find some tea?” I repeated with irritation.

“No idea,” the sandwich man mumbled looking to a nowhere land!

“There,” the guy who stood next to me said, pointing to the place right across the road. Right opposite... and, I hadn't seen it as I was not familiar to that place...

I crossed the road shaking my head... “How insecure people can be!”

It was not the first such experience... Nor, I am the only one to go through such an experience.

‘Lack’ is the right word to describe such a mentality. When we operate from this state, we remain confined to the insecurity bounds we operate from. Just like the tea vendor who was insecure to show me another tea vendor, yes, right across the road... and, just like the sandwich vendor, who too feared as across the road there was another sandwich vendor, his competitor... we all have in us an insecure tea vendor and an insecure sandwich vendor... We can not see another man taking away our business... We guard it so fearfully and jealously, that, invariably we lose it in the end...

We don’t prosper...

We can not feel the true joy of our own success...

When others succeed, we feel defeated, robbed!

Two young boys had come to see me after their twelfth-standard results. They were good friends, and, both of them had worked equally hare...and, above all, both were my students. One scored 98 in the subject I had taught and his friend only 68. Both came with sweets, both celebrated... the young-man who scored less seemed extremely happy for his friend... and, genuinely... He said, even his parents were proud of his friend. “Sir, my parents treat him as their own son!”

When I heard it, I felt goose-bumps!

Is it possible to genuinely feel the other guy who scored top marks, who bagged a big post, who bought a fine home or brought home a lovely car, who got a big scholarship to study abroad, whose feats hit the newspaper headlines... yes, is it possible to genuinely feel that guy as ‘our own guy’?

I have experienced enough envy whenever someone else – the other guy – took home the ‘cup’, the glory... the accolades... the big job, the big break...

And, at the end of it all, I know this: if I am genuinely able to feel in my heart that the other guy is ‘our very own’... the experience can be not only liberating, it is exhilarating, too...

Trust me, it is... Try it the next time, your child scores less and his friend stands tall in the class... Try it when your neighbor comes home with his sexy new car... or moves out to his swanky new apartment... Try it when your daughter’s friend gets a big break to go abroad for study or work...

Think, really, truly, fully that it is your own success... Rejoice in others’ glory as if you are rejoicing in your own...

I am trying...

This IPL finals, I was rooting for Preiti Zinta’s Kings X1 Punjab. They really deserved it and came so close to it. Moreover, KKR had won the title once before and, for Kings, it would have been a glorious moment... But, in the end, KKR won...

What would, always, stay in my mind is the jersey Shah Rukh Khan chose to wear after his moment of glory... It was not the jersey of his victorious team... It was that of the vanquished...

“My friend is a winner,” I heard SRK feeling, “my victory is her own’!

GERALD D’CUNHA