Noel Manuel
The big cats in the wild have a unique way of sustaining their hunger. The lion, considered the king of the jungle, largely depends on its strength.
Considered to be a social animal, the collective strength of a pride enables every member to get its daily share of 18 to 20 kilos of flesh.
But, despite its agility and strength, the King has to go hungry at times. This because, of its inability to adapt to the environment. Lions are good hunters but poor adaptors. They generally live in dry lands and try hard to avoid the rains. This strange dislike often results in the pride going hungry for days together.
Adaptation is an important characteristic for every living thing on earth. Be it animals, insects, plants or human beings, acclimatization to people, things and places are significant to our survival. It promotes the quality of life we live by way of being ‘accepted’ and this in turn leads to our success in every sphere of our endeavors.
We need to direct our strength towards adapting to various situations. Besides, also living our lives exactly the way the people, things and places expect us to live. Adaptation develops acceptance and acceptance is the fertilizer that nourishes the quality of our lives thereby bearing fruits of success, prosperity and good health.
Like the king of the beasts, the cheetah too, has a problem with adaptation. It depends largely on its speed to bring down its prey.
Considered the fastest animal on earth and with speeds of over 100 miles an hour, the cheetah is a ferocious hunter. But then, like the lion, the cheetah also cannot withstand rain and moves to dry areas at the onset of monsoon. But the dry lands don’t always promise a consistent menu. At times, the cheetah has to starve for upto a week before it can hunt a vulnerable prey.
So in reality, speed or strength are not the actual fertilizers that nourish acceptance for the growth of success, prosperity and good health. It is adaptation that fertilizes various situations and builds a sense of ‘wanting’ and ‘accepting’ the things and people that live around us. Our environment gets friendlier and the quality of our life improves.
Among the cats of the wild, the leopard is a unique and strange hunter. Unlike the lion and cheetah that depend on strength and speed to survive, the cheetah largely depends on its ability to adapt to the environment for its survival. The leopard is not a social animal but this has hardly been a deterring factor in its hunt for food. While all other big cats move on to drier lands during the wet season, the leopard adapts itself to the situation and makes the most of the wild in the absence of other big cats.
It is this quality of the leopard that sets it apart from the other big cats of the wild. How then can we make the quality of our lives more worthy?
Our lives are similar to that of the wild cats when it comes to adaptation. Particularly for the youth, it is an important characteristic as their very existence depends entirely on their ability to adapt to various situations. Remember, the laws of nature never change. But nature constantly changes. Similarly, the die-hard habits of man never change. But his behavioral patterns have to constantly do in order to make him ‘accepted’ and this is an important characteristic of our lives.
When we can mould our behavioral patterns by altering our likes and dislikes to the environment we become more adaptable and like the leopard, we too, can enjoy the gifts of nature and nourish our quality of life in the absence of others.
Almost five decades ago, and you would agree with me, Dimapur was virtually a forest with availability of little or no basic amenities. There are stories of wild animals and other beasts that dominated the lands. At that point in time, drugs and liquor were unheard of and therefore substance abusers and pushers did not exist.
People courageously stood against the dangers of wild animals and gradually started getting accustomed to the perils that surrounded them. And those early settlers or adaptors, braving the dangers, have been duly rewarded today for their ability to acclimatize to different situations.
Things have changed over the years and in the present day the idea of developing our surroundings by adapting ourselves to various situations has seen a decline. We want to do things that we think is right and fail to acknowledge, whether those things are actually appreciated by others. We show regard to the people and things around us and because our mentality has witnessed an increase in our own personal interests, we too are gradually beginning to depend on our strength and speed to get things done our way. The result, like the lion and cheetah, will leave us suffering in most of the situations that we encounter in life. Not now but maybe later.
Adaptation is the key that opens the door to acceptance and unless we learn to be accepted by the people and things around us there is no way by which we can improve the quality of life we live.
Everyone shuns alcohol and drug addiction. “Even my dog fails to acknowledge or obey me when I’m drunk,” remarked an aged man who has been addicted to alcohol for sometime now.
Substance abuse has grown alarmingly in different parts of the country and this has brought us more misery than most of the other problems put together.
The cure for this disease is in comprehending the logic behind the quality of life that we seek to live. If we wish to live a life filled with the qualities of success, prosperity and good health, then we need to acknowledge the opinion of others and start with our parents, relatives and friends. We need to adapt ourselves to the appreciation of good values and ethics that they so freely wish to reward us with, in our day-to-day behavioral patterns. We need to concede to their views and apparently the key that opens up the door to acceptance will not be denied to us.
On the other hand if we wish to live a life filled with the qualities of failure, poverty and ill health, then my friends, we would be closing upon us the door of acceptance. And the feeling of not being ‘accepted’ or ‘wanted’ is by far, the greatest social stigma we all try to avoid during our lifetime. I’m sure that you would like to avoid that too.
noelmanuel@rediffmail.com
The writer is the Bureau Chief (Nagaland) of Eastern Panorama (News Magazine of the Northeast), Coordinator of the Northeast Region (Poetry Society of India) and Life Member of the Poetry Society of India, Phonetics Trainer.
