// My original article at http://blog.careerstory.pk/ from Feb 2012 //
A month has passed since my daughter’s first birthday. I tend to get a little sentimental here… Seems just like yesterday that all of her would fit in to my hands.
Anyhow, getting back to the point…
The other day, my father gave my daughter 4 balloons. Now the details about the balloons are important…so read on…
4 Balloons
The balloons were connected by simple transparent tape. How did that happen? Yes, you are right… they were some of the balloons left from my daughter’s birthday. Since these balloons had been taped to the wall and stair etc. Now finally the 4 balloons were loosely connected by the little pieces of tape.
As my daughter was presented the balloons, she burst with joy and started cackling and raised her hands towards the balloons. Moments later, “finally” the balloons were in her hands and she was as excited as the sky on the 4th of July (I figure only in the states ;)).
Now, an interesting development took place, one of the balloons came loose from the tape and bounced off on an almost 45 degree angle. My daughter looked at that one balloon and quickly let go of the 3 she had in her right hand and started to walk towards the one stray balloon that was quickly getting farther from her. Yes, she let go of the 3 in her hand to follow the one that that was getting away… apparently she thought (I presume) that it was going to get lost.
Anyhow, what happened after that is a different story. But, I learnt something from this.
This simple childish act of my 1 year old daughter, which may be classified as an inherent human trait (not learnt from the environment at this stage) is something which follows us humans all thru our life!
Look at it… everything in our life may be wonderful and then one thing goes wrong…and we let go of all the other things (the 3 balloons) and lose sleep over that one thing that is going wrong (the single stray balloon) all the while the majority of our life is not that bad, and in pursuit of that one stray balloon we give up the joy of the 3 balloons!!
I have decided now, that whenever something goes wrong in my life, I shall look at that event as the single “lost” balloon and not let go of the 3 I have in hand. Let’s reason with this… Is it fair to forsake the 3 in hand for one that is getting away…is that cost acceptable? How often have we realized this cost years later? Is it not better to rationalize it before we come to the realization that we could have handled the other things better while trying to manage the difficulties in life too?
Of course, needless to say, the balloons are the things that are happening in our life, the tape is the events and relations holding the things together and my little daughter is life… well she is my life