The Need for Flexibility

successfully hatched and this new, reinforced nest continued to provide shelter for the baby swallows until they grew up and flew away to mate and make their own homes. There is a great lesson in this for all of us: if a bird or animal fails in some effort, it seeks to understand the reason for its failure. It does not simply give up and succumb to adversity. It casts about for some other, better way of doing things and rectifies its errors by harder work and better planning. Human beings would do well to follow this example. Our planning is so often faulty and the efforts we make are so often inadequate that failures in many spheres are commonplace. But, really, all it would take to achieve success would be to give further thought to the problems besetting us and a deeper appreciation of the strategy we need to adopt. It is a wise man who learns by his own mistakes. Motion and Direction A western thinker once commented, "You have removed most of the road blocks to success when you have learnt the difference between motion and direction." One intrinsic quality of activity is movement. When you are walking, driving, riding a bicycle, galloping along on horseback or roaring along on a motorcycle, you are moving. But in what direction? Are you moving towards your destination, or away from it? The actual motion in both cases seems to be no different in quality. The great difference between the two is that the former brings you ever nearer to your destination, while the latter takes you further and further away from it—leaving you where? Nowhere. At least nowhere that would be worth your while going to. It is direction that is all-important. Even if we only get on to a slowmoving bullock cart or a cycle rickshaw, we shall do better than a jet plane whose pilot has no sense of direction.