Let me tell you a story about dogs and cats which has something to do with life and temper.
Imagine this. There's a stretch of road with houses on both sides. Each house has a pet cat and dog. Outside the house, there's stray cats and dogs.
1) So once awhile, the stray dog will go around and mark territory by pee-ing at certain points. Angered, the dogs inside the houses, trapped by the locked gate, make lots and lots of noise, barking and howling. At the same time, causing havoc around the neighbourhood with all the noise. Being irritating. The stray dog however, ignores and continue marking his territory and occasionally chases other stray dogs that happens to intrude into their territory.
2) While the dogs are making lots of noise making a big fuss about the situation, the cats in the house just sleepily lay down comfortably, waiting for the next meal and just watching the free show by the barking dogs. Without a care or worry, just waiting for the next meal. Ignoring the fact that something is wrong. Well, its not their problem. It'll be their problem if the next meal is not coming because of it. And they start meowing, at that same position, just looking cute.
3) And here comes the stray cat. Always silent, never in the spotlight, roaming free. Grabbing all the opportunities that lies outside the gates for the next meal. The stray dogs might have marked their territory, but the cats, because of their low profile actions, got the whole place to explore without being bark at.
So what's the moral of the story? There are a few ways you can relate it to. Lets start with anger.
For the barking dog, that resembles those people with short temper. They make noise, they complain, basically they make people around them rather miserable and stress. Not to mention the disturbance and the scene they'll make. All the barking and howling etc. didn't do anything about letting the stray dog mark their territory. Instead, it just makes things go chaotic for the selfless thought of itself.
Next we'll go with ignorance. Ignorant people just want everything to come easy. Get a stable job with the highest salary and the minimum effort to do work, settle down somewhere and mind their own business, anything that happens around them doesn't concern them, but if it affects them then they'll start complaining, whining but not doing anything about it. After awhile, the best answer and most common will be, "What to do? Bo bian...".
Following ignorance will be selflessness. The stray dog cares for nothing but territory domination. Get everything, as long as it will benefit itself, for as much as it can. These people are most successful in life in terms of economy and status. Their confidence comes from their undistinguished desire to get what they want no matter what the costs. They ignore the complains, the scene that was created by them, but because what they did benefit another person and in return benefit them, they earn a plus point in what they are doing.
Lastly, we have the stray cat. These group of people are the happiest in living life as the way it is. Happy at what is given and what was already acquired. They are opportunists, peace loving, patient and open minded. They look at the world at an outsider's point of view. Some took matters into deep thinking and came out solutions which are rather unseen from the rest of the community. Others strive to achieve a goal with sometimes no economical or status benefits.
People are born sad, angry, happy, determined or ignorant. It can be change with one's effort and will power through psychological means. Great examples are our great geniuses of the past and present.
Sir Issac Newton was an anti-social person at young age, suffering from depression and mental illness. That didn't stop him from being one of the greatest physicists ever. Albert Einstein was born with a rebellious nature and even got into trouble while in school, saying that the teachings of the school dull and not creative. Later on, though the ego of his rebellious attitude remains till adulthood, he admits blunders and mistakes whenever he does them, openly to criticism and accusations. Stephen Hawkings was once a lazy student. He spend no more than an hour each day during college to study and concentrated more on leisure activities and socializing. At the mist of discovering his fatal illness was actually progressing much slower than expected, he turned into a workaholic and developed the ability to recreate and study page-long formulas in his mind for hours at a time spanning years in duration.
These are great examples. There are countless of other smaller less conspicuous examples out there that we see everyday. In a way they are the same. It all boils down to how much one wants to change the way he or she live their lives. Changing something requires action by one, not by another and that action is carried out from the heart, not the mouth.
