There are petty people everywhere. They seek petty satisfaction over petty things. Their petty smugness makes them smile inside. They revel in their petty victories.
I do not like petty. I like openness, generosity, broad-mindedness, magnanimity. I feel old fashioned. Petty people get their petty ways, and surprisingly get ahead in small petty ways, that add up into something petty big.
Big petty become bigger petty, everything becomes a seriously petty competition. And guess who wins the petty fights. The petty people of course. Yet, why is it that I heave a big sigh of relief, that I am not petty.
Pettiness rules in most places, now-a-days. Narrow-mindedness gets you ahead, today.
Which reminds me of a poem by Rabindranath Tagore. Here it is:
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by Thee to ever-widening thought and action -
Into that heaven of freedom, my father, let my country awake.
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