It was Den’s spring school holidays and he was getting bored of playing alone. So when his Mom gave him the option of going with her to the super market, as a 10 year old he initially refused for he did not fancy going grocery shopping with his Mom. But then he remembered the pet shop that was next to the supermarket and thought to himself it would be fun to play with all the pups, kittens, hamsters for a change. Quickly he got ready and off they were to the supermarket. He asked his mom if he could play at the pet store while she shopped. They knew the pet store owner quite well and the owner was quite fond of Den.
Den walked through the aisles playing one by one with the pups, kittens, turtles, and then he came across a tank with crabs. As he was about remove the lid to take the crab out, the store owner who was watching Den from the corner of his eye, walked across to Den and told him that it wouldn’t be a wise thing to remove the lid as these crabs would just crawl out of the tank. Den moved to the next one and saw the other tank which also had crabs but did not have the lid on the tank. Quickly he ran to the store owner and said, “ Sir, you need to put the lid on the tank, the crabs will crawl out otherwise”. The store owner, smilingly at Den , in a dismissal way waving his hand in the air said, ” Naaah, don’t worry about them, these ones wont crawl out.” Den curiously asked, “Why Sir? These are crabs too.” The store owner with softness in his eyes looking at Den said, ” These are the negative crabs. When one will try walking out, the other ones will pull him back.”
As my teacher continued, the story reminded me of our culture, human mind-set – the things that I was seeing at work place, a behaviour among friends and family. This is what we do when someone comes up to us with a new idea, in all high spirits, with all the zeal and enthusiasm to do something different, think of a different solution, or perhaps even has the so called radically different ideas of approaching typical life situations or not conforming to the so called societal norms. We easily tend to label the ideas as stupid, unrealistic, our pessimistic outlook starts off with all the negative things that could possibly go wrong or worse we even become jealous, insecure which lead us to act in a sabotaging manner. These are the negative crabs that we need to stay away from. This is the crab mentality that needs to be handled with awareness- especially at work places.
We have seen that we all have that negative and positive voice in our head. However, we are largely conditioned to focus on the negative, on the lack, on our perceived ideas of failure, chronic discontentment which is a function of lack of practice of gratitude.
As the entire world goes into handling the current pandemic, let us be grateful for all those people who have recovered from the virus, the fighting spirit that people are demonstrating, the spirit of healing, wellness and selfless care that medical staff and all other hundreds and thousands of people are providing each other including our pets and animals. Let’s not pull each other down, let us stand together for the sake of humanity and do our bit and undertake our responsibility towards each other. We are all interconnected and wellness of one is wellness of the other.