How can we differentiate between what to hold on to and what to let go?

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
How can we distinguish between what to let go and what to work on in our life? Yes, life is like a tennis match. In a tennis match, sometimes we are serving and sometimes we are returning.
Now when a player is returning, at that time they have little bit less control. Now a player may be very good on the forehand, but if the serve comes on the backhand, the player can’t say, I will play on the forehand. He will play on the forehand and just hit air and the ball will go off.
They lose the point. So when we are returning, wherever the ball comes, we just have to get the ball back in the play. So in life, sometimes we are serving and sometimes we are returning.
And in some situations, when we are serving, we can decide whether to serve on the forehand or the backhand or into the body, at what height, at what pace, with how much spin, all that we can decide. So there are situations in our life when we have more control and there are situations in which we have less control. A lot of frustration comes when we don’t understand what phase of life we are going through.
So if we are returning and we expect the freedom of serving, we will get frustrated. If we are serving and we exhibit only the reactiveness of returning rather than initiative, then again we lose the opportunity. So if we, rather than getting caught in the situation, withdraw ourselves from the situation and calm ourselves down and think calmly about the situation, pray to Krishna and then look at our situation.
I couldn’t say that the same situation, if I keep trying, keep trying, keep trying, I will never come to. But in terms of the overall picture of my life, how important is this? Srila Prabhupada explains that intelligence means to see things in their proper perspective. Sometimes I may try to get this person to do this and I will force them.
Yes, but I force them to do that and that person got so alienated, but then there are hundred other things which anger me or displease me. Okay, let them do this one thing, but we develop a stronger relationship to other things. So if we have an overall understanding of life, if our life is directed by an overall purpose, then how important which particular thing is, we can decide.
And accordingly how much to try to control and work on something, how much to let go of things, that we can decide accordingly. Say if we are a crowded local, in a metro train say in India, we are a crowded train and somebody is pushing us. Now, if they push us, how dare you push me? It’s crowded, I push them back.
And then they push me and I push them back. And we get so caught in pushing each other, that our station comes and goes and we forget. We are still pushing, pushing, pushing.
Now sometimes we just get so caught in some situation that we forget the broader purpose. No, okay, you are pushing me, I am in this local for a short while, I just move somewhere else. And okay, you win this battle, it doesn’t matter to me.
So we move on. My purpose is not to conquer this space in the train. My purpose is just to get to my destination.
Then I can decide, let it go. But if somebody is pushing us out of the train itself, then we can’t allow that. Then we have to push back and maintain our space.
So when to control and when to let go, that can be understood if we keep our broader purpose foremost in mind.