“One-Hand Distance!”– That was one of the orders for disciplined line formation in gym and scout classes in school. We would measure a hand’s distance from each student to our right, left, and front. That was that simple: perhaps some kind of consulting study must have helped determine that the average length of each school student’s arm is just about the same in each class. Or, rather, the hand was more to establish relative coordinates than perfect distance. Whatever it was, it made things a lot orderly and simpler to manage for the powers to-be; and therefore, was much efficient from the students’ perspective as well.
There is also a saying in India that literally translates into this phrase–‘एक हाथ दूर रहना’ (ek haath door rehna). However, being a saying by definition, it has a slightly deeper meaning. It refers to deliberately staying away from something. This something can be various things. The usual suspects are bad habits and bad company–and thus, bad influences in general.
What was interesting for me to notice was how strikingly like-scripted both were, yet how the former had a rather functional reference, and the latter, a philosophical one which can be extrapolated to the way of leading life. And at the same time I am about concur, and put a end to this straight-forward discussion, I can’t help but notice that in their individual contexts, they intrinsically function in a similar fashion to remedy the respective issues. This is something like a cross-industry best-practice revelation to me! Haha… The words remain the same, and at a fundamental level, they both work on the principle of ‘caution is better than cure’–in order to avoid resulting complications, they preach their audiences a rather simplistic order/thumb-rule which make things run much efficiently!
Howmuchever we–the free generation–would like to deny it, the fact remains that some things, some places, some people, and some paths, are best left unexplored; and perhaps, for not just your own good, but that of many a other souls! Or is it so really? Where do you draw the line between learning-form-the-past; and learning-from-your-own-experiences? ;o)
Perhaps I would expand on this a bit more in the near future. For the moment though, on an ending-note, I am going to start a page titled ‘one-hand distance’ on Facebook, to go with this thought. If you find this interesting enough an observation, feel free to join-in! 🙂