Laws control everything, virtually everything we come across. What I share with you today is two crucial laws in life. The story of the first law opens as a taxi driver was on his way to an Airport. Quite unexpectedly, the driver slammed on the brakes. The car skid away from the track a bit but saved a collision by a few centimeters. Another car had jumped into the drive way as if from nowhere. The other car driver whipped his head and began yelling at the driver in the story. The passenger in the car was surprised to see his driver smiling and waving at the other as if he is a good old friend of him. The passenger asked him,
“Why did you do that? He would have almost ruined us.”
It is this unknown taxi driver, who explained for the first time, perhaps the best finding of the century – ‘Law of the garbage truck’.
He said to the passenger in a soft voice.
“Many people are like garbage trucks. They run around full of garbage, full of frustration, full of anger, and full of disappointment. As their garbage piles up, they need a place to dump it and sometimes they'll dump it on you. Don't take it personally. Just smile, wave, wish them well, and move on. Don't take their garbage and spread it to other people at work, at home, or on the streets. The bottom line is that successful people do not let garbage trucks take over their day.”
This story came to my mind when I was listening to a brief talk done by a Catholic priest who was addressing a one day fast against corruption in politics organized by Dharma Bharathi Mission under the spiritual leadership of Swami Sachidananda Bharathi, the emerging exponent of the Second Freedom Struggle in India, which is intended to rebuild India into a poverty free, caste free and corruption free nation. The venue was Gandhi Bhavan Ernakulam and the day was 3rd Sept. 2013. The priest said that every religion and profound philosophy talk about a light in their centre. He easily established his point that being a light everywhere always is the purpose of human life. He shared one more thing, the Law of the Wicks. He warned us that living like an unlighted wick is not purely as harmless as we all assume it to be. He asked us to imagine a burning wick with another hundred unlighted wicks around. It was easy to visualize that the light we get is shadowed by the other wicks. He concluded saying that a life unlighted is always an obstruction to lighted wicks on earth.
Joseph Mattappally
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