Power + Hate < Mediocrity + Love

 

War has a tendency to flare up and eat itself up, simply because hate is too combustible to last for too long. It’s an aberration in human evolution when you break down like an overheated engine. Peace has a tendency to persist because love and harmony carry it without any cribbing and combustion. It’s full with moments when you make. It’s when you are creative.  

Power plus Love is enlightenment. And Mediocrity plus Hate is hitting the lowest-most miserable point of existence. 

Just like defeat gives us more dejection than our elation on getting victorious, the pain of loss is far greater than the joy of win. Since the scale is already tilted in favor of pain, we approach with fear. And our fears are directly proportional to the suppression of our real essential self, i.e., love.

A sword fighter has a beautiful wife. She is in awe of his reputation and is almost daunted by the force of his persona. She respects him, but love is missing in the secret chamber of her heart. As it happens, she falls in love with somebody outside her marriage. As if that is a small problem, to make it still worse, the lover happens to be their servant.

Lies and deceit can be hidden, but love has the natural propensity to shine like sun from behind the clouds. It comes to the light. That is its nature. As per social norms, love usually stands out scandalous. The offended husband challenges the servant for a duel, taking it for granted that he will surely kill the illicit lover, thus giving him death and earning more laurels for his swordsmanship as bonus. The deed will not reek of cold-blooded revenge and his motive to kill the servant will lie buried under the fair game of duel.

So it is supposed to be a sure death for the poor servant. The sword fighter hides his revenge and anger under the art and craft of his swordsmanship. Most importantly, he is sure of victory, because by the logic of it, how can it be otherwise, pitted as he is against a man who has just picked up the scabbard from his famed walls to clean it. And he being a master swordsman, whose reputation chimes across the four corners of the state. The servant is thus sure of his death. He has accepted his fate, death.

When you are eying victory, you are also eying safety to yourself from the corner of your eyes. And you have fear also, because without that the sense of victory cannot sustain. With a sense of victory you just cannot be fearless. There is something to fight for and achieve and for that you have to remain alive. This breeds fear. But the servant has accepted death and failure. His acceptance is hundred percent. He has no doubt about it. And when there is no doubt, you become fearless.

The swordsman isn’t totally free from fear because his certainty about his victory falls short of the servant’s certainty of his defeat and death. He isn’t as sure of his victory as the servant is of his defeat. So, irrespective of the fighting caliber, the servant is more fearless of the two, simply because he is under less doubt. In his fearlessness, he decides to let loose all madness in him before his death. He doesn’t hate the opponent. He isn’t angry. His acceptance of death enables him to give all to life before death.

The sword-fighter on the other hand cannot give all in the fight, because he is fighting to save respect, prolong life, take revenge, and all these with further expectations from life. Life itself means fear in this way. The offended husband takes maneuvers as per the art of sword-fighting. In pre-death fearless madness, the lover strikes with sword like he is striking with a stick. To all the conventional strokes of the sword-fighter, he hits back with the most awkward and unorthodox ones. Fearlessness in his eyes creates fear in the opponent’s eyes.

The servant kills the master! Why? Simply because he is sure of his death, and the master isn’t that sure of his victory! How can he be? He simply cannot. He is fighting to save a lot of things and fighting to save things cannot allow you to be cent-percent fearless.

Moral of the story is: However strong you are, plus some hate and revenge, you get cut down to your least possible mediocre size. And however weak you are, plus some love and the consequent fearlessness and acceptance, you hit your optimum best. Love has the power of alchemy to tilt the scale in your favor in almost mystical ways. You have to believe it.

As a powerful man burning with hate, you are like a furious storm eating its own existence. And as a commonest of the common person with loving kindness in your armory, you are like a gentle breeze that has no limits and bounds of space and time. You evolve. You spread. Then you become one with the supreme self. In hate you shrink, your own fire eats you up.