An elephant took a bath in a river and was walking on the road. When it neared a bridge, it saw a pig fully soaked in mud coming from the opposite direction. The elephant quietly moved on one side, allowed the dirty pig to pass and then continued its onward journey.
The unclean pig later spoke to its friends in arrogance, “See how big I am; even the elephant was afraid of me and moved to one side to let me pass”. On hearing this, some elephants questioned their friend, the reason for its actions. Was it out of fear? The elephant smiled and replied, “I could have easily crushed the pig under my leg but I was clean and the pig was very dirty. By crushing it, my leg would become dirty and I wanted to avoid it. Hence, I moved aside.
Points to take from the story
1) In this era of overwhelming information feeds, over breaching communication streams and channels, excess of information irrespective of relevance to us, our attention has become an easy prey.
2) Our attention has limited scope and we should be very cautious where we focus our attention.
3) Our points of attention feed us at psychological and conscious levels. This can make us calm and strong or anxious and stressed, depending on our choices.
4) Reacting to every opinion, every situation around us can exhaust us of energy. Choose your battles wisely to not only win, also learn and evolve in the journey.
*Original Source of Story … Unknown