“What is Common Sense is not always common practice.”
--Dr. S.R. Covey How strange are we!
- We develop serious pains in body parts due to wrong habits of sitting, standing and walking postures.
- We know well that physical and mental exercise is must for one to remain healthy but do we really care?
- We know the quick fixes are not the solution but how many times we really uproot the root cause?
- We know that we need to be more skilled to handle the issues of life but how many times we really made efforts?
- People who have more money than you or you can dream of; still complain they have money problem.
- Do you feel scared with the thought that everything is destined to end even YOU, your body, and your existence?
- Do exams not really make you ill, worried or depressed?
- Don’t you find yourself sometimes under peer pressure?
As many are the people so many are the issues, concerns and worries. We behave as if we have no control over these things and we find it a customary way to live. Lives pass and we get no solution.
Our habits, attitudes, beliefs, expectations, ego, emotions, passions, experiences and personalities contribute to the level of Common Sense we practice in our lives.
For some, career making is Common Sense and for some marriage. Generally we choose things based on social mirror or our convenience; what we want is to prove ourselves as a social being; how we want others to see us and what seems easier. We keep on changing and adjusting on different parameters appreciated socially and we don’t really know where we are going.
One day a man was going to market with his son and his ass. They met a guy on the way.
"Why walk when you have an ass to ride?" said the guy, "seat the boy on the ass."
The father seated the boy on ass. Soon they met a lady. "How shameful of you!" said the lady, “let your father ride, won't he be tired?". So, the boy got down and the father rode the ass.
“Poor boy", said the next person they met, "why should the lazy father ride while his son is walking?" So, the boy got onto the ass too. As they went on, they met some travelers.
"How cruel of them!" They are up to kill the poor ass." cried one of the travelers.
Hearing this, the father and the son got down. Now they decided to carry the ass on their shoulders. As they did so, the travelers broke into laughter.
After reading this tale we may think how fool was the father. We are the same, some where in our lives, more or less, we do the same or the just opposite of it.
Why do we behave like this?
Why do we ourselves hinder the common sense being common practice?
Before we move on to understand why we won’t be able to raise our common practices on the ground of common sense, it is vital here to comprehend what is common practice.
Common practice embraces two utterances: common and practice. Common means shared by all or many; and practice means a habitual or customary way of doing. As a result, common practice is a customary way of doing the things agreed by people as their common natural way of doing the things. Thus, taking common sense into common practice means using common sense as a matter of habit.
To make Common Sense a common practice as a matter of habit, firstly we have to understand the various barriers of Common Sense, diagnose them and exterminate them.
Common Sense is a daily, weekly, monthly, yearly and life long process. Eroding barriers, gradually and slowly, quietly builds Common Sense.