Act, don’t react!

There’s a striking quote of Voltaire’s which goes something like this, “I may often regret that I have spoken but never that I have remained silent”.

We may not realise the profundity of these messages until we experience it in person.

So often we shoot our mouth off only to repent later; a knee jerk reaction to be repented at leisure. Often these hasty reactions leave behind a gamut of hurt, pain, animosity, bitterness, broken relationships and more importantly broken hearts. Rarely these results are reversible. Like it’s said, ‘Words & hearts should be handled with care; for words when spoken and hearts when broken are the hardest thing to repair; for even when mended the crack is still there.’

We end up with all this when all that was required is a pause. A pause to think and then act, according to the best of our discrimination, unbiased by emotions. As my Teacher puts it in simple words, ‘Act, don’t react’.

I’m sure you’d agree with me wholeheartedly that that moment’s pause in the heat of the moment is far better than all the regret and guilt that we go through later. So the next time you are ready to explode, whether in speech or the written word, stop! Think! Then Act! True, it’s not easy, especially when provoked knowingly. But then, I think that’s what differentiates a boy from a man, and a girl from a woman.