“People sure do get good at funny things.”
The old fisherman’s statement made me realize that I’d spent much of my life learning a completely worthless set of skills.
I loved soccer. I would spend hours alone in the yard, juggling a ball around and trying out tricks. This is exactly what I was doing when the fisherman made this observation…foolishly running about the yard, thinking I was pretty awesome…and with an effortless stroke, he knocked the wind out of my egotistical teenage sails.
He told me what he’d seen on television the night before: stupid human tricks of sorts…spinning plates on sticks or juggling kittens. Something. He kept going on about moronic people that have gotten so good at meaningless things. It seemed a little rude but I couldn’t debate it. I nodded my head quietly while having a miniature identity crisis. My skills centered around kicking inflated spheres and running for inhumane periods of time. This man fed people for a living. He had been going out to sea, exposed to the elements while doing manual labor, for decades.
I just listened and digested as the conversation eventually wound down. I went inside for the evening, one part bewildered, one part deflated.
Over the years, this encounter transformed from an awkward moment into a lesson in not taking absurd things seriously.
You can be pretty good or even the best at anything in the world and may even receive much praise for it. And yet somebody, somewhere doesn’t care and thinks you are ridiculous. And you are.
That shouldn’t stop you.
You are not the doer of any action here, O Rama, so why do you assume doership? When one alone exists, who does what and how? Do not become inactive, either, for what is gained by doing nothing? What has to be done has to be done. Therefore rest in the self. Even while doing all the actions natural to you if you are unattached to those actions you are truly the non-doer; if you are doing nothing and are attached to that non-doership (then you are doing nothing) you become the doer! When all this world is like the juggler’s trick, what is to be given up and what is to be sought?
— Vasistha
