The Instruction Manual!
The other day I was assembling my new office chair, but somehow when I opened the box, I couldn’t find the instruction manual. “It can’t be that complicated, I can easily fix a chair!” I said to myself with a smirk! So I started studying the parts, some were round and some metal ones, I did try to put a few together, some made sense, some were easy to get, but some didn’t make any sense. Looking at one of the parts, I wondered how and why you need this in a chair.
But fortunately, just when I was about to pull my hair out of my head, I saw a white sheet neatly pressed against the cushion — here is the manual, I exclaimed with joy!
I followed the instructions, place part A on top of part B, use screws number 7, and so on… and ta-da, I almost had a chair! The task was still the same, I was setting the pieces together, I was screwing them to stay in place, that piece of paper didn’t tighten the screws for me, I did the work myself, but the instructions made it so much easier. The little instruction book made it possible for my efforts to bring my DIY adventure to fruition.
So, I started pondering, why don’t we humans come with an instruction manual? Wouldn’t it be exciting! It would make it so much easier to understand each other. To comprehend situations better, we don’t have to go thru the mental agony to perceive what the other one is thinking about us, or if the other person is even someone we think of them to be or to answer questions like what should we do to impress others, to make the other people respond in a way that would make us happy?
Having an instruction manual would make it so much simpler to make friends, be successful, build enduring relationships, and be happy. When we meet someone new, all we need is to follow the rules, and a set of directions and boom, we have what we want.
But the reality is, we human beings are amazing creatures, we are not a box of furniture or a robot — rules don’t define what we are, we evolve with time, we grow with experiences, we behave differently with different people, and in different circumstances! Maybe we couldn’t build a beautiful design before, but we can now with someone else, or when in a different situation.
If we were once a broken 3-legged table, doesn’t mean we will always be that crooked piece of furniture. Just that the box and the tools were not the best fit before, doesn’t mean we’ll never get our box or the right tools for our box again.
Find the box which furnishes you with what you are looking for, be the screwdriver to tighten the parts to make an astonishing art when you discover that box. But don’t waste time trying to build a desk from a box with parts of a chair in it! Don’t expect to get something which doesn’t exist in the box — don’t lose your time striving to put pieces together, trying to tighten them up, only to see that they are falling apart every single time. Don’t feel sad thinking about that box which you once tried to assemble for so long, but didn’t turn out to be even close to what you assumed it to be. Let go of the pain of not being able to be that perfect one someone once presumed you to be.
And most importantly, don’t just look for a table, because everyone else around you are admiring the great table they have when all you need is a chair.
Know what you want, and you’ll find it. This world is marvelous, it’s beautiful, there are plenty of boxes, and you just need to open the one which is right for you at that point in your life. The day when you meet that box of exactly what you are looking for, you won’t need an instruction manual, things will fall into place, all pieces will make sense, all will fit, and you would enjoy the process of unraveling it.
~~ Poornima
