Hot red coal!

 There once was an old Chinese man, a well-known advisor for his community, and had people from different spheres of life come seeking his help. One day a great emperor came to visit him while he was having dinner with his household and the emperor joined them. They started conversing about mundane things and eventually dived into why the emperor came to visit. The emperor asked in a distressed voice, “how does one have answers to the many problems of life that face us every day?” He replied with an indifferent look and started to smoke.

After they finished dinner, the housemaid started providing hot drinks to the guests. The man took hot red coal, which they used to light their cigars, and called on to the maid. He gave her the coal and said, “here, take this.” She was very confused by his actions but received the coal with her long-sleeved cloth and took it away, burning her dress while doing it. The maid returned with a lump of hot red coal and gave it back to him. He looked up at her and said: “oh, just what I needed,” and lit another cigar.

The emperor watched everything with attention as this went on and was very impressed with the subtle message. He thanked the wise one and left to address his business.

In life, we do not usually get the chance to choose what is given to us. Some things are just given to us without our consent or decision whatsoever, things that happen to us, the place of our birth, the people we come across, and many others. Undoubtedly, some are just out of our control, and we can only be at the receiving end.

The maid did not ask to receive the hot red coal. She didn’t ask about that situation but was left with no choice but to be at the receiving hand. After receiving the coal, she was left with a ruined sleeve and a lump of coal. However, when faced with the same situation, he used the coal to his advantage.

At various points in life, we encounter situations where we have no voice in what is happening or given to us. We often say we were dealt a bad hand or we are unlucky; we prefer to take what is given to us as it is and put it down somewhere that will not be in harm’s way from us or anyone else.

We usually choose to be the maid; we take what is given to us and go along. Take all that comes with it as fate and move on. We get into similar situations repeatedly with similar results, which drags down our hopes of change, and we choose to remain in the same condition.

In the late 1960s and 70s American psychologist Seligman coined a term called learned helplessness. Learned helplessness, in psychology, is a mental state in which an organism forced to bear aversive stimuli, or stimuli that are painful or otherwise unpleasant becomes unable or unwilling to avoid subsequent encounters with those stimuli, even if they are “escapable,” presumably because it has learned that it cannot control the situation.

He was experimenting with classical conditioning when he came across this phenomenon. In this experiment: dogs that had received unavoidable electric shocks, even though avoidance was possible, failed to take any action in successive situations, whereas dogs that had not received the same shocks took immediate measures in subsequent conditions. This experiment was replicated with humans, and the results were identical.

We sometimes find ourselves in positions of learned helplessness and fail to act against the pain or the situation we are going through, even if avoidance is possible. We accept the reality of our condition as it is and learn to live with it. We take the hot red coal and burn ourselves instead of lighting our cigars.

I ask you today, what is happening to you? Is it happening to you, or are you letting it be as it is?  Are you in a position of learned helplessness? Are you burning with coal like the maid, or are you lighting your cigars like the man? Take your time and think about it. I am sure you will be impressed with what you discover as the emperor.

   Be all you can be.✌

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