“Let a man, an arrow, and an answer each go straight. Each is his own witness. God is judge” ….. Eastern Proverb
The first chapter of the book starts with this proverb. Each of you who read this may have your own interpretation of this proverb. Perhaps it strikes a different chord in each of you.
I, for one, would replace the word “God” with conscience, but it is not a major quibble.
Straight behaviour, straight talk, straight answers. Each can find its own mark. Or not. An arrow that goes straight does not always go to the target. It depends on the aim of the archer. However, this would be an unnecessary argument on my part. The implication is that the archer’s aim is good.
This phrase harks back to a mythical age, when honour was really valued, as was straight talk. However, in the real world in which we live, we honour straight talk in principle, not always in practice. How else would the art of politics survive and thrive.
There was, at one time, an extension of the Schrodinger’s Cat postulate to what some physicists called, or used to call, The Many Worlds Theory.
The world, according to the ancient Hindus, is an illusion, a perception. When this veil, what is called Maya, is lifted, we perceive reality.
Whatever is defined as reality.
The fact is that we all live in our own world view. So, while we each live in the same world as each other, we live in our own world as well. There are as many worlds as there are people, because we all see the world differently.
At a more prosaic level, we will all see a scene and photograph it differently, depending on how we see the scene.
An answer that I think is straight, may not be deemed straight by someone else. We often don’t give a straight answer, because we may be scared of hurting someone else, or of saying something that may adversely affect our prospects.
A measured answer then often becomes the norm.
What is straight?
Yet, each within our own perception, our own principle, we must each be straight, and give a straight answer, like the straight flight of an arrow.
Until gravity, or some other force, forces our straight path to divert from it’s original path.
What say ye?
wow – very correct and there is no other words to be added!
Hey, thank you very much for that..
I too prefer conscience as a replacement for God. Conscience is a kind of internalized morality that gives people integrity.
True. I agree with you there.
Aaarrrgh! You always get me thinking…
Straight talk, or truth, is something we humans spend a lot of time and effort avoiding. We may say we value straight talk, but that’s only if it agrees with our own set of beliefs. We’ve got “truth” and “belief” so mixed together that I don’t think we have the capability of perceiving reality.
Exactly… Straight talk, beliefs, perceptions all get bundled up and mixed up…
Great post. It is true that we must be honest with ourselves and measure our dealings with others and ourselves with a moral compass. The danger I think is assuming we all have the same compass. Still we must honor our principles and live by them.
Yes, you are absolutely correct. The problems, I think, start to arise when we start to measure everyone by our moral compass
Yes, absolutely. The fascinating thing is to discover people you know very well actually have a very different “compass” than you expected. But then again, we humans can be a bit unfathomable…even to ourselves!
This is so true..
Hello Rajiv,
Beautifully written. It depends on the situations; to be straight or not, if you ask me. But nonetheless let me add, in this world being not straight is straight. You just need to hit the target, don’t even care about the path like Lord Krishna said.
Let me also mention, that I am a great admirer of your writing. It’s very matured and your flow is amazing. 🙂
Thanks a lot! Much appreciated…
Great read Rajiv. No we don’t always honour straight talk in practice. And we get exceedingly judgmental about others. But I do think it gets easier to deflect ‘gravity’ as we get older and stick to a – more or less – straight course 🙂
Yeah, you are so very correct there. We all differ on what ‘straight’is
Love slide bar.
Thanks!
Loves Slide
really Rajiv!
Thanks a lot!
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