Strength is always considered a virtue and weakness a thing to be avoided. But what if we have been thinking all wrong?

1

When I was undergoing training at the Indian Military Academy, we went through the toughest of routines in our initial days. It was a routine that’s usually the case for most armies but not normal for civilians.

So, naturally it took us time to adjust our bearings or even consider it as possible. A lot of us cribbed about it in those initial days. Most of us got used to it in a month or so but a few who couldn’t left.

We thought of ourselves as stronger than them and much more worthy! Naively…

2

All of us tennis fans had a tear in our eye when we watched Federer for the last time and the way it all happened.

However, someone completely clueless about tennis, who saw just a picture of Federer crying in a post match interview after losing (not his last one but some of the earlier ones), may think of him as a sore loser.

Not knowing that here stands a once in a lifetime champion, who’s crying not because he lost but because of the love and support he had received from the crowd and how he felt about it. He was just letting his emotions show.

How wrong would that assumption be about the strength that Federer, or for that matter any other champion, carries within him…

3

Travelling in the Nilgiris mountain ranges yesterday, I was telling my daughter about how people live in these places. How they build their dwellings and carry on with their usual life

I also told her about the big mighty mountains – how they appear so strong and capable of supporting so much. And yet, with so much pressure on them to support the tourism economy, they are also fragile.

My daughter couldn’t grasp initially that the mountains could be weak but as we discussed more and I related it to the environment, she could begin to understand how they could get affected.

An aspect most of us adults know but ignore – that while the environments around us are strong today, if not cared for, could turn weak and wither away!

—

These seemingly unconnected threads ran through my mind over the last couple of days, as I let it wander into free space. But as I looked back, I realised that all of them had one connection.

An assumption about strength and weakness that reflects our usual worldview but isn’t correct. It leads us to behaviours or thoughts which are not the best aligned with the situation or with the people involved.

And yet, knowingly sometimes, we commit this same mistake again and again in different contexts…