Reflection 76 (sell your cleverness)

Sell your cleverness and purchase bewilderment (Rumi)

Let us start purchasing bewilderment.

Today I heard a press conference of a Malaysian minister about MH17 which was shot down over Ukraine. Malaysian Airlines had been flying that route for years long and so had many other airlines. No airline had decided to avoid that route because of the conflict between Russia and the Ukriane and international agencies had declared formally that the route was safe. And yet a passenger plane was shot down by mistake.

The questions that were asked by the reporters showed so much of misguided cleverness and luckily a few asked questions of genuine bewilderment.

The "try-to- be-clever" reporters were still trying to make the minister say that the Malaysians had made a mistake by considering the route safe. Next morning headlines would be: Malaysian government admits mistake. A much more human approach was adpoted by one reporter asking about the feelings of the Malaysian people. And one asked about what the minister would do and say to the persons who fired the missile if he was to meet them in person.

Luckily the minister was wise enough not to claim the mistake to be his, not to burst out in an unwarranted display of emotions.

If we hear the news about MH17, it makes us sad, we feel for all people and their families involved in the äccident. We want our authorities to do everything possible to avoid similar things from happening in the future.

With that in mind we can choose to fume about it and let things like this and other things in the news spoil our mood and put us in a state of worry and anger for many days, keeping our focus on that one grossly negative event.

Or we can choose to pray for the victims, whenever we pray, but then put it aside in between prayers and choose a life of bewilderrment and gratefulness for all the good things happening in our world and in our life. From the sunrise to the beauty of the flowers and the grass. the beauty of the skies and of the wonderful friendship. I wrote about awe in one recent reflection.

Oh, yes let us live in awe, let wisdom govern our cleverness and on and off we have to exchange our ever calculative cleverness for bewilderment. What a great quote of Rumi !