A Valuable Lesson!

There are times in life when one's ego gets the better of oneself. Being a civil servant in charge of a fairly large subdivision, I have found myself in this familiar situation many a time. I can recount an incident where I was invited to address the students of a Government Arts College in a taluka on how to tackle competitive examinations. I was pretty keen to address the students and readily accepted the invite. The drive was a long one and even as I reached the college I could see students expectantly waiting for me. Some of them were in awe of me (or atleast I thought so!). I was received with a thunderous applause by an audience of about a hundred or so and after the usual garlanding and introductory speeches, I started my address. I could make out that many of them were from a very rural background. Most of them had very poor knowledge of English too. Some were not very interested, while others shot some good questions back at me. At the end of my address, there was a thunderous applause again and I felt pretty good about myself. There were some informal discussions later, where I gave the students few more tips. All this while I could sense myself enjoying the attention and company. I realised that a few years back I was also like one of them, unsure of myself and now here I am, all settled and people were looking up to me. After the thoroughly enjoyable experience, I was invited to the Principal's chamber for refreshments. With an unmistakable spring in my stride and chest all puffed up, I walked out of the room towards the Principal's chamber located in the adjoining building. With a song on my lips and thoughts of the adulation received still afresh, I started descending down the stairs when THUD!!....It took me a few seconds to realise that I had indeed hit my head against a low parapet. At first I thought it was just a bruise, only to realise blood was oozing out. Sheer carelessness on my part or was it? Suddenly from this infallible young achiever, here I was...a mere mortal who wasn't even looking where he was headed. It was a pretty embarrasing moment for me, with all the students watching me, some with shock and some with sniggers. I just wanted go and hide myself somewhere. The local doctor was summoned and he thankfully ruled out any neccessity for stitches. I held a bloodied hanky over my head, quickly thanked the apologetic college staff, sat in my car and drove back quitely. Over the long drive I reflected back over the happenings and felt that I really needed that bang on my head to bring me back to reality. Things do really happen for a reason and more often than not to teach us lessons. One's success or failure is truly a gift from above. We own our successes so much that we let it cloud our own thoughts by inducing a self of false pride in us! We rule out destiny and divine grace when we say that we and only we are responsible for our success. The bang on my head made me realise that it requires only a second for circumstances to change and we are not the sole reason for things happening to us. So why all the fuss over our ego and false pride! Gandhiji gave us a talisman to guide us when the Self becomes too much with Oneself. For me though just the recollection of this 'knock' is enough!!