Do not lose thy soul to the bad apples
This Christmas season, explore a personalized trick to sniff and trash the rotting bad apples. With the humble crib, starry trees and twining red and green, it’s time to gift a soprano to your soul.
Benjamin Franklin coined it, the Sunday sermons bridged its length and breadth with more meaning, and finally it became a textbook advice — “One bad apple spoils the barrel.”
Technically and literally — it does. You know. We know.
KEEP THE BAD APPLE AWAY. BIN THEM!!
Benjamin Franklin is right. A corrupt bureaucrat can brag about his hundred followers. A policy breaker can feign innocence and build a new corrupt core in his institution. Therefore, it is important to patrol an institution’s functioning and clear out the bad apples in a snap. But institutions work on a tenure and public influence. It is different when it comes to an individual. In his daily absolute life, the sacred truth is that bad apples are not without but within. He can choose to keep them in the belly of his mind or let it pass; his skill in managing this, determines his win and peace. Bad apples that you must keep away are nothing but your tears, your fears, your curses, your doubts, and your own self-limiting thoughts.
More than living with others, you must live with yourself first. It is your conscience to whom you are answerable
How I figured this out? I learnt it the hard way. Only recently when I presented myself as a poor host to a bunch of uncles and aunts who made a generous visit of a week to our busy home. They had announced their visit a month in advance. Known for their interludes of poor judgment between love and gossips, I was always wary about the way they measured regional delicacies with a wand of authenticity. When they landed in our city, I was in the hospital. Dehydration due to chronic digestive disorder is what it was clinically diagnosed, only I know the underlying cause was prolonged stressful thoughts.
Similar triggers continued in both professional and personal life. It took little acts of daily discipline, to trust in the heaven and not the hell. I try replacing stressful anticipation with love and acceptance. My uncle and aunts were entitled to their opinions, and I am entitled to mine in my own way. If I had only believed that nothing can hurt me, I would have passed off their comments like a soap melodrama. I do that now. I keep away the triggers that bleed my energy by simply replacing it with love and hope and loads of sympathy for the ones who never leave a chance to prove you are wrong.
The biblical ‘Love thy neighbor’, please! Sandwich it with Luke 6:41 ! Do not blame your handsome neighbor who drains your energy or a close buddy who broke ‘yours faithfully’ and publicly pointed a crooked nose in your photo post while others glorified the same photo. Nay do not lay blame on your nagging relative too! They may be triggers but they are certainly not the horses depleting your energy. They are not the wheels of your ride but only the unruly spectators who you can ignore. Miles to go before you retire and miles to read before you judge
Recently I had to tidy up an entire kitchen rack that housed forgotten potatoes at a corner. The potatoes had grown white tentacles and patronized an odd smell to all the other forgotten food stuff. I had to bin all the good turkeys too. Rottenness does have an orthodox power. It can slowly seep and conquer, and you would never see it coming. Whatsoever, bad apples you must throw. But remember they are within you.
I disagree with the social media galaxies of videos and inspiring brains that render us free and innocent with temptations that say — “Surround yourself with people that brighten you, uplift you, love you, flatter you AND keep away the vultures, the scavengers, the leeches.” By and large almost everyone except your immediate family is either a vulture or a scavenger or a leech or your recent enemy. Blood is thicker than water so the leeches in the family are pardoned.
I disagree also because we are not the product of their making but our very own; accepting and empathizing with them is socially healthy
Here’s what you must accept — Most folks seem to think that they are right, and you are wrong. These folks are right in their capitalist considerations, and we must respect their self-opinion. It’s their birthright, it is just human primal instincts. So, it is but natural to find faults with everyone else. You may blame the neighborhood grey haired woman for her filthy curses or the short-tempered gamer if he blurts out an untidy word to you. We cannot hold them responsible for their age’s glamour and their genetic disorder of a short temper. Each one is born different with his or her magnificent powers and uncontrollable shortcomings. We must accept this and look inwards to pick and bin the bad apples of evil thoughts So, enjoy the garden of variety but keep your wheels grounded and traverse you must on life’s journey with only the good apples in your trolley and with the push of the gentle dreams that dared to dream big.
If you have been well fed with love, care, and education until you were an adult, then let me tell you that there is just one person who is responsible for whatever happens to you and that is YOU alone.
Every negative thought attracts another negative thought and then one more and there it saves it all. Sooner you will see that your fate is nailed with a boulder of hopelessness and obsessive poor judgement. You manufacture a product inside you that is faulty and does not work. For the faulty work, you blame the outside hands and lips who were merely spectators. Yet you fail to see you were wrong because “I am always right.” You let the bad apples inside you to infuse their spoiled vinegar and make you sour, bitter, coward, hungry and inflamed to make everyone smell bad.
Every tiny bit of negative thought should be detested with all your powers. Your body and behaviors are a mirror of your thoughts. STOP every time you make a judgement that is not positive. Know its consequences on you. Stop even if the gears are against you, there may still be a reason to smile. In the garden of multitudes and beautiful varieties, this Christmas season, let us resolve to hold our petals untarnished by the impatient decibels of the unruly wind’s song; thereby living the true Christmas grace and harvesting the Bible’s promises. Keep yourself as white as your baptismal robe.
