Are You Watching Closely???
It was a dark cold night. The wind was blowing heavily through the trees. Peepal was shouting somewhere deep in the black. My brother was driving the car with aim to reach till the speed of light. It was ten in the night. We in the group of four were returning from a trip and were in the middle of a jungle. We seemed to have lost the way but continued on the road with hope to find a familiar sign. Suddenly in the illumination of headlights, we saw a police officer standing on the side of the road, with his bike parked. In the reaction of milliseconds, I hit on my brother’s shoulder & said “Stop, Stop. Let’s ask him the way.” He shook his head in disagreement & carried along the way. After we passed some distance I asked him that why he didn’t stop the car. He slowed down a bit & questioned me – “How do you know that he was a police officer?” I simply replied, “because he was wearing the police dress & had a police bike”. He said “then you weren’t watching closely. His dress may seemed as that of a police officer, but there was no star on it. He was wearing black sports shoes & had a gun which is not standard of what Indian police officers hold. He seemed extra alert & a bit excited on seeing our car which he shouldn’t have been".
I listened to him carefully but thought that he was just too cautious. Why someone would pose as an officer when he is not. But my thoughts shifted their flow when I saw another’s day newspaper with the headline ‘A car looted in middle of jungle by fake cops’. It was a shock. It was a lesson. I learned one thing that day – ‘Always be alert’. It may seem a less meaningful or a general statement, but how many of us actually follow this? Most of us see things but we actually do not notice. As the famous saying by Sherlock Holmes goes “You do see, you just don’t observe.” Seeing is receiving the stimulus, noticing is analyzing it.
I thought deeply about the problem & came to the conclusion that those who are not alert are the ones who are either highly imaginative or highly negligent. Those who are highly imaginative are often engaged in their inner thoughts which leads them to not pay much attention to the outside environment. There is nothing wrong with imagination; they make you creative, they help in decision making, planning, and finding unique solutions to problems. But too much engagement with thoughts drains down one’s mental energy, which over a prolonged period leads to physical exhaustion too. The burnout of bodily resources is one of the major cause of being unwary besides negligence. The key approach of a successful person is - “Balance”. Balance in everything you do. A balance in imaginativeness/creativity & alertness/reasonability is what that makes one effective in both personal & professional life. So let us all start a balanced approach. Let us all start making efforts for prudence. Let us all start watching & not just seeing.
Now if you all were really watching instead of seeing, you would have noticed a danger behind the tree in image... Ohhh!! RUN it's a WOLF !!!
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