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“By your stumbling, the world is perfected.”
In our daily lives, we succumb to the highs and lows of life. We get what we want, then we miss out. We succeed in some task, then we fail. We get lucky, then we fear we’re cursed. When things are good, we’re happy. Else, we feel crappy. It’s pretty rudimentary stuff that we get the knack of by the time we turn six years old.
But what if our understanding of the highs and lows of life are wrong?
Forgive me for not being able to find the context in which Sri Aurobindo said or wrote these words, but his quote, “By your stumbling, the world is perfected” illustrate that there is a fundamental misunderstanding of our approach to life.
Consider a baby learning to walk. She first has to learn how to stand with support, then without support and then start to take steps by mimicking her caregivers.
When she falls, is it that she made a mistake? In the strictest sense, I suppose one could say yes. But is that the point? She’s learning. The whole point of learning is to make mistakes and aim for better the next time. She stumbles, yes, but she’s perfecting her walk.
The difference between the baby and us is that the baby still hasn’t learnt to look at life in the way most of us do. She still hasn’t learnt that once she stumbles, she should cry. Parents who read baby books are…
