The ruler of the country of Wu took his marksmen and set out for the island where Monkey Mountain was located. As soon as the monkeys on the island saw the hunters appearing on the shore, they ran away in panic and hid in the treetops.

But one of the monkeys stayed where he was. Ignoring the hunters who came ashore, he began to swing on the branches of the tree where he had been sitting before, leaping from branch to branch and performing delightful stunts.

The ruler stretched his bow to shoot this agile monkey with extraordinary courage. He shot his arrow at the monkey, but the clever animal showed great dexterity and caught the arrow in mid-air.

Faced with this situation, the king ordered his men to shoot together. The skillful monkey was hit by several arrows at once, and within a minute it fell to the ground as a lifeless corpse. Then the monarch showed the monkey lying lifeless on the ground to Yen pu, the most arrogant and skillful of the men accompanying him, and said: "There, you have seen what happened. This animal has demonstrated its intelligence recklessly. He was confident in his own ingenuity, in his own success. He thought that with this intelligence, this ingenuity, no one could harm him. When you are with people, or when you do things together, don't try to assert yourself on the basis of what is different from them, on the basis of what is more distinguished than them, on the basis of your own qualities and abilities."

When they returned from the hunt, the first thing Yen Pu did was to become an apprentice to a sage. He put aside everything that had ever made him important. He renounced pleasures and amusements. He learned to hide all the superior qualities he possessed, to conceal the traits that marked his superiority over others. He erased the appearance that he was more distinguished than the people around him. Soon the people in the country did not know in which mold to understand him. They did not know how to evaluate him. Because he was too far away from revealing his skill, his intelligence and showing his own vulnerable side. So his influence on people was enormous. Everyone had a fear-like respect for this man who had no pretensions of superiority to assert himself...

The story I quoted directly from İsmet Özel's "Speaking in difficult times", although it is a story, it almost coincides with what we experience in the middle of our daily lives...

We are always jealous of people with different characteristics and superior skills and we want to bring them down in some way. We find it difficult to avoid hostility or resistance to people with superior qualities. This is partly due to the behavior of people with superior qualities. If there is an exaggerated sense of pride or vanity, if there is an exaggerated display of superiority, the hostility of people with ordinary qualities grows at the same rate.

Self-confidence is not about belittling, humiliating or mocking others. And self-confidence is a beautiful trait in moderation, as long as it is not exaggerated, as long as it does not turn into an egoic frenzy. As confident as we are in ourselves, we should also respect and not belittle other people's personalities and characteristics.

None of us are alike. The differences between us are more than our similarities. Others do not have to have our qualities and abilities. We are all independent of each other. We have different physical, mental and personal characteristics. In the age we live in, trying to be like each other pushes the limits of reason, while the frenzy to imitate each other can lead to downright tragicomic situations.
The main thing to keep in mind: While being aware of our own uniqueness, uniqueness and uniqueness, respecting and accepting other talents, characteristics, beliefs, differences and identities and accepting them as they are.... This is the virtue of our age... Fortunately, not all trees are apple trees or plum trees. Then we wouldn't know the taste of peach. Good thing all seasons are not summer. It is good that nature has all colors. It is good that there are so many notes that we can listen to those magnificent works of art... It is good that we are all different and unique creations and that life is so colorful and unique... It is good...

Mukaddes Pekin Başdil

Researcher-Author

Source: Denizli Haber