Daily Musing: Be Indifferent to Disdain and Criticism by Rusen Kumar

Once there lived two clever dogs in the city of Mumbakulu. They read in a newspaper about Chinnikulu town, where one could get free delicious meals. But this town was about 100 km away from Mumbakulu. They decided to move their base to Chinnakulu to spend rest their life, peacefully. They wanted to reach Chinnakulu at the earliest. They planned and decided to travel 10 km every day, so that they would comfortably make it to Chinnikulu in about 10 days. They will travel during the day and planned to rest in the nearest village when the sun sets, in the evening. They will move around and see the village they proposed to stay at and enjoy themselves, so that they can resume their journey afresh, the following morning.

On the first day of their life changing journey, they moved with confidence and enthusiasm. Once evening set in, they stopped in a village for the night stay. Observing two new brilliant but ‘outsider’ dogs, the group of local dogs started barking at them, attached and treated them with disdain. The affronted duo ran and decided to travel during the night also, so that they could stop after travelling for 20 km. The reached a new town the following morning. Dogs of this town also gave them similar treatment, as if criticizing their objective and they too did not let the duo stay in the town. Unfortunately, they had similar experience in every village and town they crossed, when they tried to stay, to rest. Everywhere they were barked at and chased away.

Dogs tend to very possessive about their respective territory and become strong enemy, if they feel someone (especially from outside) is intruding into their territory. Faced with such hostile treatment, criticism and insults, they continued to move, with the result that they completed their ten-day journey into just 5 days, to reach the town of their dream. Their hard work had paid off, and now they were enjoying free delicious meals and living a peaceful life.

We also face similar scenario. During our life journey we are also treated with criticism and disdain, which helps us move even quicker towards our destination and goal. The people, who criticize us or slight us, actually do us a big favour, as they kind of force us to move ahead (towards our goal). Whenever we will undertake a great journey, people will start criticizing us. Whenever you commence a small or big positive task and move with an objective, very few people will support you or relate with your thinking and objective. They will use all possible tricks to discourage you. They will create hindrance in your growth journey; will keep reminding you of possible risks and danger. Those who are mature enough to close their eyes and ignore such criticism, do not face any obstacles.

Thousands of events and mishaps take place every day. If we continue to react to each, we will lose our mental balance. We are very keen to grow and move ahead in life, but we tend to wither away our energy and focus by indulging in useless chores.

We must always focus on our target and remember our goad. As soon as we lose sight of our goal, we get into trouble. When we get into an argument with destructive people, we ensure our failure. Engaging with negative people, results in our downfall. We tend to get entangled into petty and useless issues.

Indifference is the solution. Indifference is a very powerful tool and is an amazing policy to tackle criticism and disparagement. Those who take interest in petty worldly issues often get derailed from their path. Like, while walking in a garden, we carefully avoid stepping on thorns, similarly in our life journey, we must keep away from critics and continue to move ahead in our growth journey at a fast pace. With a clear goal in mind, if we constantly continue to look back, we will get delayed in reaching our destination.

Let’s choose our calling, our goal and destination and remain commitment to move in that direction. Never stop. Avoid worldly issues, as others will be happy to entangle you into their problems, and will continue to criticize you to perturb you and deviate you from your path. Criticism has potential to discourage us, if we pay attention. It is only natural that people will continue to create hindrance, but we must continue to focus only and only on our destination. We may come across various people including co-traveler during our journey. The counsel is to avoid developing any kind of affection, hatred, love or hate relationship with them. We must continue to move forward quietly and with tranquility. This is the secret mantra, which will help us reach our destination, soonest. 

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The article is authored by Rusen Kumar. The article was first published in Hindi.

English adaptation by Arun Arora, a renowned communication professional, who is fond of reading, writing, and learning, all the time.

(Note: Please take author’s permission to reproduce this unique story in the newspaper or web-mediums. The request may be sent to rusenk@indiacsr.in)