There is an interesting analogy between Cricket and Bhagavat Gita.
A player comes to to field with a bat to play. Another player is ready to bowl. Both face each other professionally. So far so good, nothing wrong about this because this is one-to-one and is justified. Why are ten players surrounding one player? Why did they come? Its simple. To get rid of the batsman. You may call this decently in cricketing terms as "Fielding". There is an important life lesson to be understood here
"There are 10 harmful eyes waiting to be-little you and they are around you. So, you better watch them out carefully and be aware of them"
Continuing our analogy,
We have 10 players, a batsman and a bowler which is great, but why did 10,000 people assemble there? What are they doing here ? Just shouting 4s, 6s, OUTs and having fun. The batsman who is in the limelight is celebrated and criticized back-n-forth. Nevertheless, the best batsmen make merry by scoring a century without giving too much importance to these. Another important life lesson to be understood here
"Life is all about criticisms and celebrations when there are ups and downs. Do not loose focus on your primary goals"
Continuing our analogy,
While the match is in progress, suddenly the crowd shouts "OUT OUT OUT" while the batsman is actually not out. He knows that he is not out, but restlessly waits for the umpire's decision while the crowd continues to shout being unaware of what really happened. The umpire (The Single Strong Man!) is in a responsible position to take the right decision and unleash the truth without getting carried away by the crowd. If the umpire takes the right decision (NOT OUT in this case), all ten thousand voices are silenced by one solitary signal. There is an interesting analogy here.
"One Truth is more powerful than one thousand Lies"
Mahatma Gandhi showed us the path to truth and wisdom while he was taking over the mighty British empire. Thousands of people followed him to the path towards success.
Another interesting quote here...
"Truth Always Triumphs"
This is an eternal philosophy.
Continuing with our analog,
We talked about the batsman, we talked about the bowler, we talked about ten thousand people all waiting to get rid of the batsman. Well, the fact is we don't need any of these to get rid of the batsman, the co-batsman (or the runner up) is good enough to get rid of him. How? If the other batsman makes mistakes while running between the wickets, there is every possibility that the batsman would get out. We have seen great batsmen getting out without scoring runs due to the mistakes by the co-batsman. So what does that teach us in life?
It is not always that our foes who are against us, sometimes our own people whom we trust may go against us.
or in other words
There aren't permanent foes and friends in life. Life oscillates between friends and foes.
Finally, if one carefully notices the game of cricket, one would realize that every ball bowled is with an intention to out the batsman. Attitude, focus and skill of the batsman turns the ball of failure to the ball of success. If we understand this, we also can realize that
When the world throws balls at us with malicious intents, play them with good attitude and sane intentions that would help convert them to century making balls. Nobody can defeat you as long you are in the right path with good intention. This is the secret behind successful life.
Do not worry about failures, because they are the pathway to success.
Life is all about doing our duty (Karma), playing through our strengths, helping and being happy.
-Jai Hind
(Translated from a Tamil speech rendered by Solvendar Suki Sivam)
