A western thinker once commented, “You have
removed most of the road blocks to success when
you have learnt the difference between motion and
direction.”
One intrinsic quality of activity is movement. When
you are walking, driving, riding a bicycle, galloping
along on horseback or roaring along on a
motorcycle, you are moving. But in what direction?
Are you moving towards your destination, or away
from it? The actual motion in both cases seems to be
no different in quality.
The great difference between the two is that the
former brings you ever nearer to your destination,
while the latter takes you further and further away
from it—leaving you where? Nowhere. At least,
nowhere worth going. It is direction that is allimportant.
Even if we only get on to the slow-moving
bullock cart or a cycle rickshaw, we shall do better
than a jet plane which has no sense of direction.
Both in our private lives and social existence, it is
imperative that we take stock of our means and
resources and then set off in the right direction, if,
sooner or later, we are to reach our destination.
Often people launch themselves on careers,
plunging headlong into them, without giving due
thought to their actual capacities and to whether
they have any real potential which can be
developed. At times they are led astray by trivial
considerations, ill-founded opinions and
overwhelming emotions, and rush heedlessly into
whatever first comes their way. When the result is
not what they had anticipated, they fall to
complaining against others, lamenting their losses
and failures and claiming that it was due to the
prejudices of others that they had had to suffer
frustrations and that their careers had come to
naught. Had they given more profound thought to
the matter, they would have realised that the fault
lay in their own ill-judged planning or even total
aimlessness. Had they started out in the right
direction, others would not then have had the
opportunity to place obstacles in their path and turn
their successes into failures.
--Maulana Wahiduddin Khan
( Ref - The Moral Vision)
