The Bird That Flies on Foot

One. Forgiveness is a noble virtue. But if you want to survive, it doesn't mean that every quality within you must necessarily be noble. People can live without nobility just fine—no problem there. When embracing nobility makes your own survival difficult, holding onto such nobility means foolishly accepting the textbook platitudes about nobility created by others and keeping yourself in torment. At the end of the day, your suffering is yours alone; those who made forgiveness a noble virtue—perhaps hoping to receive forgiveness for their own crimes—won't come to ease your pain. There are some devil's children who, when forgiven, cross even the ultimate bounds of devilry. They see forgiveness as nothing but weakness. If some of their well-wishers keep buzzing like flies in your ear: "Forgiveness is noble, forgiveness is noble," is there any real need to keep that in mind? The devil's well-wishers are what keep the devil alive. Forgiveness is certainly a noble virtue! But when? In two cases: when applied to someone worthy of forgiveness; and when forgiveness brings you peace. Most rude people remain rude for life. What forgiveness for the rude?

Two. You hear many people saying wonderful things about women. All lip service! Look into it and you'll find that in their homes, the woman whose cooking is good still commands more respect. Yes, even now in our country, a woman's ability to cook well has a thousand times more acceptance than her being a good human being. It's entirely possible that the one who cooks may only be good at cooking and have no real competence in any other area. Then again, you see women who cook very well but aren't very good as human beings. Still, her position in the household ranks higher than a woman whose cooking isn't good but who is better and more capable as a person. Yet if you look for a housemaid who can cook well, it's not very hard to find one. People pay good wages to housemaids who cook well, and they give good treatment to those they don't pay wages to.

I know a girl who gets valued by everyone only because she can cook well. Yet as a human being she's so awful that if she couldn't cook, it's doubtful anyone would even cook for her to eat! At the end of the day, people value such girls more. Whether feminist or masculinist, many of them unite on this one point—in their stomach-ism! No matter how capable or good a woman might be, if she can't cook, her education, knowledge, philosophy, understanding of life, humanity, humility—none of it really catches the eye. When a girl's cooking is excellent but her behavior terrible, people stay quiet about it; but when a girl's cooking isn't good but her behavior is, people deliberately start finding faults. One whose heart is bad but cooking good enters our hearts more easily than one whose heart is good but cooking bad.

Three. Some people think that whoever is good with the mind will probably be good in bed too. Yet many of those who are good in bed don't even know what the mind is! Without the bat and ball working together, can you hit a six? But what can you do! However, there are many people who are equally good at both. Sadly, those they get may not be ambidextrous in both directions. Then you can't tell anyone anything, but accepting it is also difficult. This is one hell of a pointless pain! Marriage is a very important chapter of life, certainly much more essential than buying extra clothes; yet this essential thing has no trial room! The happy thing is, humans are as much slaves to habit as habit is slave to humans. Once you get used to tea without sugar, even sugarless tea can chase away sleep. No problem! And whoever never learns what tea tastes like with sugar has no relationship at all between tea and sugar in their mind! One who doesn't even know about the existence of kacchi biryani finds plain rice to be kacchi! Due to habit, they have no real difficulty satisfying themselves with it.

Four. When you recover from a long illness, if you pay attention you'll notice that for the first few days, adjusting yourself to this healthy state seems quite difficult! You'll feel that the illness was more comfortable. When humans stay in hell for a long time, they become accustomed to it, their comfort zone forms there, so leaving that place makes them feel a suppressed unease. Only each person knows where they feel good. Just like that, you'll see some people are so mentally filthy that they simply cannot tolerate the presence of anything good. Such envious, lying, cheating, pretentious, stupid, petty people find great joy in remaining as they are. Those who aren't like them become their targets. Anyone who doesn't fit within their comfort zone of thinking, belief, and living—they go after that person at any cost, deceive them, cause them pain, and strike whenever they get the chance. There are two kinds of people in the world: less time, more brains. More time, fewer brains. Often, the second type goes after the first type.

This mental structure depends largely on experience, knowledge, and belief. Even if you try very sincerely, you cannot move them from that place. They were born to stay there until death. So it's better if you can completely abandon their company. Even if you have to lose something from life for this, it's still better. Not being able to act petty with petty people is itself a failure. So when you move with petty people, you eventually can't help but act petty. You can't fly without growing wings. So you have to give time for those wings to grow! If you try to fly before the wings grow, everyone watches and laughs. Those who do this ignore that laughter and keep jumping and flying. Eventually they think of themselves as bigger birds than actual birds and go around announcing this to everyone. Imagine the situation! If you mix with them, you'll become a bird like them—a ground-flying bird!