There is one beautiful story of a professor and the boatman. I assume many of us might have read about this in school. But I guess with time, we often forget the good things we learnt before. So, let’s start this post with this interesting story.
The story begins with the professor, a very erudite and learned man, who decides to cross the river to reach his destination. He sees a boatman, and asks him if he could cross the river. The boatman agrees and thus begins the journey of the professor across the river. The river is huge, and due to recent rains, it is flooded across its breadth. The professor soon gets bored, and starts talking with the boatman to pass the time. He asks the boatman ,”Do you know about science and engineering?”. The boatman is confused, and tells the professor, he does not know anything about it. The professor tells the boatman,”Your 25% life is wasted as you do not know about science and engineering which is so important in today’s technological revolution”.
Then, the professor asks the boatman, “Okay, then tell me, have you read about geography, climate, and environment which is necessary to understand the earth and its wonderful seasons”. The boatman is again confused and just nods his head. The professor laments on the boatman, and says “Oh no, you have wasted 50% of your life. Anyways, let’s keep this aside. Just tell me, do you know anything about economics, how money works, and about banking, finance etc. anything?” The boatman by then is extremely sad and says, “Sir, I do not know anything about this either”. The professor sees the boatman’s situation as pitiful, and tells him, ” My dear, you have wasted 75% of your life!”
During this conversation, the boat has crossed halfway. Then, suddenly, the boatman sees something and asks the professor” Sir, do you know how to swim?”. The professor laughs and says, “No, I never got the time to learn it, as I was busy studying the world, science, politics, philosophy and economics”. The boatman tells the professor “Sorry sir, we have a hole in the boat, and the boat is going to sink!”.And then before jumping to save his own life, the boatman says to the professor” I think you have wasted 100% of your life!”.
Now, what’s the moral of the story? Well, this is a very interesting story, and it’s one of my favorites. I find this extremely relevant in our modern day life. We all are to a certain extent living the life of the professor. We study in school and college about the wonders of the world, about history, about science, but then do we even apply them in later life. We slog and work hard the whole life in earning money or making a living, but we forget that money is made for us, and we are not made for money. We have harnessed the power of science to solve physical problems which has reduced efforts, in other words made us lazy and dependent. But we have not harnessed the power of our mind and brain to the fullest. That’s why we worry too much for small issues, get nervous or depressed easily, stress out our life over petty relationships or serve our big ego. We forget that we are social animals, who are expected to care for others and live together. But we just maintain our animalistic instincts which can roughly be scaled down to eating, sleeping and mating.
So, what has happened, in short, is we are wasting 100% of our life, in spite of all the learning, earning, fighting, gossiping. Because, like the boatman, we are not learning how to swim, which means understanding what life is about, and how to live it beautifully. Books can be written ( or are already written by famous philosophers and writers). So, “Not learning how to swim means not learning how to live”. That, we are not living our life to the fullest. That we are working on those things like money, house, or car which ain’t going to save our life, on our deathbed, or even save our life, when we are depressed. Only by understanding the importance of life which means having a disease free, strong body, a stress free mind, a social and caring personality, by loving nature, family and country is going to help us swim the vast ocean of life, which is filled with enemies like sharks, ups and downs like surface waves and encompasses a depth of uncertainty and problems which needs to be overcomed to keep ourselves afloat! That’s the moral of the story!
AbhiKNotes - The blog of Abhishek Karadkar 