THERE IS A TIME TO BE SILENT
“He
who does not understand your silence,
will,
probably, not understand your words.”
Elbert
Hubbard
I had
first heard the story of the cheetah and the deer from my friend, Dr. Deepak.
It was the certification day of our programme on Personality Development… and,
it was the summer of 2006.
Dr. Deepak, who,
always, told a motivational story to our young ones in his parting message, had
this story to tell…
THE
CHEETAH AND THE DEER
One
day, in a jungle, a cheetah was teaching his little son how to hunt. As the
teaching was in progress, they smelt a prey at a distance… It was a deer. The
cheetah softly said to his cub, “Son, a deer is coming our way… Watch me how I
hunt, okay?”
“Okay dad,” the
little one said excitedly… They hid being a large bush and waited for the deer
to cross their way…
As the deer was
about to cross their path, the cheetah, leapt from behind the bush and tried to
grab the delicate deer… but, the deer escaped, and the chase began…
The faster the
cheetah ran, even faster the deer did… Finally, the deer disappeared completely
from the sight of the cheetah…
The cheetah
returned, and collapsed before his son, totally exhausted…
Looking at the
plight of his father, the little one said, innocently, “Dad, you lost and the
deer won.”
The father
pulled his son close to his bosoms and said, tenderly, “Yes son, I lost and the
deer won.” Then, he added, “Do you want to know why?”
“Yes dad, I want
to,” said the little one.
The father
explained to his son, “Son, I lost and the deer won, because, I was running for
my lunch, and the deer was running for its life.” He concluded, “And that made all
the difference between winning and losing.”
I was
inspired by the story so much, that on the certification day of the following
summer, I published a small book by the title – ‘The Cheetah’. In this book, I introduced
seven lessons on the art of ‘running for life’… Before each lesson, I used a
brief advice from the cheetah to his cub… Symbolically, it’s an advice any concerned
father would offer to his young one, or any concerned teacher or trainer to his
young student or trainee…
Today, in this
Post, I am, particularly, prompted to share one of them:
THE
FOURTH LESSON
“There
is a time to roar, and there is a time to be silent.
The
majesty of your roar comes from the grace of your silence.
There
is, also, a time to run, and a time to be still.
The
glory of your run is born in the strength of your stillness.”
I
find a fresh story in everything that see around me… I see the extra-ordinary
beauty in the ordinary things. And I tell these stories, almost every day,
through my blog posts…
But, I did not blog
for over three months (Even though I put together two books over the past few
months).
Rightly, as the Fourth
Lesson goes, there is a time to blog, and there is a time not to… There is a time
to be in limelight, and there is a time to quietly stay out of it…
You see, we are able
to see, appreciate, value and celebrate the ‘beauty’ of little things better - only when we go
quiet… stay still.
GERALD D’CUNHA
Pic’s: Pixabay
Video: Tatiana Blue/Andre Rieu
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