Choices

I once went to a person who is a personal as well as spiritual counsellor. As is usual in most first interactions between advisors and the naive seekers, I laid down a whole list of issues, concerns, wishes. At one point, he picked up one of my wishes, and asked me: what do you want to do?

"I have multiple talents," I said, "and I excel at them all. I learn new things quickly, much faster than most I know. So I never know what one thing I really want."

Then I paused, and said, "But I want to be a writer."

"Have you ever published?" He asked.

"No." I was amazed at what I saw in that little question. Am I, or am I not a writer? Who knows? My essence is only known to me, but it becomes a expression only when I undertake action. I had never published anything I wrote, though in my teenage, I often wrote brilliantly.

He did not reply directly. He told me the real story of a person who was repeatedly turned down as a potential script writer by my own organization. He did not have anything to his credit then. He went on to work for another place, became a "script writer bona fide."

"Now," my counsellor said, "your organization wants him back, but he refuses."

I listened intently.

"The point is, he is wanted now because it is now that he is a script writer. Earlier, he was just one of the many who thought or claimed that he could write. He had no proof, and there were many who turned his claim down."

Point was taken.



Months later, I decided to read Harry Potter. There is something about epic heroic tales that inspires something eternal, epical, in each of us. After all that I learnt about Harry Potter, I realized it was not a wizard and witchcraft story. So I decided to read it in December, 2005. I underlined all the words that has wisdom in them. In the first three books of the Harry Potter series, there are many.

In The Chamber of Secrets, I found a piece of wisdom. According to one, it reveals an "existential moral truth."

In The Chamber of Secrets, Dumbledore is telling something eternally humanly wise to the young wizard Harry, who has been placed in the school house of the brave, Gryffindor, instead of the house of the cunning, Slytherin, by the magical sorting hat.

"Professor, the sorting hat told me I... should be in Slytherin," Harry said, looking desperately into Dumbledore's face. "The sorting hat could see Slytherin...in me and it--"
"Put you in Gryffindor," said Dumbledore calmly.
It only put me in Gryffindor," said Harry in a defeated voice, "because I asked not to go in Slytherin."
"Exactly," said Dumbledore, beaming once more....
"It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities."

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