PROCEEDING WITH CAUTION

Proceeding with Caution ~ 274 ~ Man is endowed with far greater brain power than the elephant. No one lights a fire near reserves of gun powder. No engine driver is careless in shunting petrol bogies. But most of us tend to forget that this is a principle to be followed in social life. Every society is comprised of a variety of people who create different types of environment. In every society there are ‘marshy places’, there is ‘petrol’ there are ‘thorns’ and there are ‘pits’. The wise are those who try to avoid such difficult, even explosive situations, thus saving themselves from the trammels of confrontation. Those who have some goal or the other before them never allow themselves to become enmeshed in such things because that would mean being diverted from their objective. A purposeful man always looks ahead to the future,—straight forward and not towards, right or left. He always thinks of long-lasting consequences rather than momentary considerations. He looks at things not from the point of view of personal desires and whims, but from the point of view of reality.