A young boy is training too hard for the race he has to participate in. Seeing him train, worries his parents that he will injure himself. His father goes to have a talk with him regarding this. The father says “Son, you are stretching your limits a little too hard, you might injure yourself.” The son replies “Dad, I don’t care if I injure myself. As of today, I have not broken the record, and if I couldn’t come first, I better be out of the race.” The son’s reply disheartened the father, who says “Son, we are proud of you and your ambition, but life is not about just getting first in a race.” Son looks disdainfully at his father and continues to work, saying “I don’t have much time to waste on such debate, please close the door after you leave.”
The father calmly says “Son, I understand our disagreements, but I am just saying the philosophy of Budha’s mid-path or Aristotle’s Golden mean is not bad to follow sometimes.” The son sarcastically says “and I understand that you will not leave without explaining that philosophy to me, then do tell me what is that, but please do it quickly.” The father explains “by pushing too hard, you are choosing two extremes, either come first or leave the race because of injury, but you can take the mid-path, come 2nd, 3rd, even if you don’t get any rank, you will have the experience of racing the race.”
The son could not hear more and shouts “you mean, the experience of losing is better than getting an experience of winning, wow dad! You should spread your stupid philosophy somewhere else. Maybe you can teach it to the lions, that if they find hunting difficult, then they can turn vegan, they will have a new experience, or teach it to judge for not to decide whether a person is guilty or not, but take the mid-path and give a criminal five points for a crime or just four.”
Father understands that the son is in no mood to hear him, or he is just giving some good counter-arguments, so he decides to leave the room, but before closing the door, he says “I just want you to say that to win a race you have to participate in it.” After the father leaves, the son understands his words and take breaks from his training to take care of his health.
Life Lessons 