The Tug of War
The perennial dilemma of mankind!!!!!!!
There are two people within each one of us. Both have their own, distinct way of thinking. Both move in opposite directions. One is a child and the other is the father. The father has a pragmatic, rational outlook towards life and loves reasoning.
The child is driven by emotions and is full of passions. The other day I was walking on the street and there in front of me was an ice-cream van. That was a perfect setting for the father-son war to break out. The son in me went wild and cried out for the ice cream. The father was quick to snub out the demand with perfect reasoning. He reasoned that gorging on ice-creams is "bad" for the health and such indulgence will surely bring me down with fever. But the son did not give up, for the ice cream was the only thing he could think of, at that moment. He rationalized it saying that the whole world feasts on ice creams and not everyone falls ill. Anywayz having ice-creams once in a while does not hurt. What harm would one ice cream do?
The son gave all sorts of rationalizations for why I should go for the ice cream. There was a tug of war match going on inside me.
This is an age-old war. Life is a constant war between emotion and reason. The child in us never grows up. A war that literally makes or breaks people. At every stage in life emotion drags us one side and reason drags us to the other side. I was being pulled from both sides. I was in a dilemma.
There are many a time when one wins over the other in this war. How many times have we fallen prey to our passions? How many times have we ignored the needy on the pretext of being in a hurry. How many times have we rationalized our fear of speaking out against something by saying that "it does not affect me". The underlying reality though is that our fear got the better of reason. "How we feel about it" got the better of "what we should do about it". Our reasoning was clouded by our fear. This is when our emotions win and wreak havoc in our lives.
Also if the father wins in this war. There is bound to be turmoil. Our life would lack the pleasure, excitement and enthusiasm required. Life would be filled in drudgery.
Therefore the key here is to bring about peace in this war. To unite the father and the son within us.
To combine reason and emotion to transform our life into one beautiful journey. But ending a war is never easy. Is it?
The child is driven by emotions and is full of passions. The other day I was walking on the street and there in front of me was an ice-cream van. That was a perfect setting for the father-son war to break out. The son in me went wild and cried out for the ice cream. The father was quick to snub out the demand with perfect reasoning. He reasoned that gorging on ice-creams is "bad" for the health and such indulgence will surely bring me down with fever. But the son did not give up, for the ice cream was the only thing he could think of, at that moment. He rationalized it saying that the whole world feasts on ice creams and not everyone falls ill. Anywayz having ice-creams once in a while does not hurt. What harm would one ice cream do?
The son gave all sorts of rationalizations for why I should go for the ice cream. There was a tug of war match going on inside me.
This is an age-old war. Life is a constant war between emotion and reason. The child in us never grows up. A war that literally makes or breaks people. At every stage in life emotion drags us one side and reason drags us to the other side. I was being pulled from both sides. I was in a dilemma.
There are many a time when one wins over the other in this war. How many times have we fallen prey to our passions? How many times have we ignored the needy on the pretext of being in a hurry. How many times have we rationalized our fear of speaking out against something by saying that "it does not affect me". The underlying reality though is that our fear got the better of reason. "How we feel about it" got the better of "what we should do about it". Our reasoning was clouded by our fear. This is when our emotions win and wreak havoc in our lives.
Also if the father wins in this war. There is bound to be turmoil. Our life would lack the pleasure, excitement and enthusiasm required. Life would be filled in drudgery.
Therefore the key here is to bring about peace in this war. To unite the father and the son within us.
To combine reason and emotion to transform our life into one beautiful journey. But ending a war is never easy. Is it?
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