Practice what you Preach, Preach what you Practice!

Yesterday, while talking to a friend, I couldn’t remember the name of the movie, The Hurt locker. I could visualise the scenes from the movie in my head, but I just couldn’t recall the name. I didn’t try too hard to remember the name, as I had my good friend – my phone – with me. I opened Google on it, and in no time I knew the name that I had been trying to remember.

The Internet makes us all appear smarter. We have all the information we need on our finger tips, literally.  It is not just hard facts that can be found on the Internet, but even answers to life changing questions like, “How to wake up early in the morning?” can be found readily on the Internet.  (I did actually search the term “How to rise early” and found two interesting articles on the subject by Steve Pavlina and  Leo Babauta)

If such information is readily available, then isn’t it logical to assume that this world would now become a better place than it was when such information was not readily available to one and all? But, is that really so?

I think not.

The reason is simple, we read things, and we feel enlightened. We might even practice some of the things for a few days, but soon enough we are back to our old ways. The only difference is that we now know a few things that we didn’t know before. So, even though we fail to practice the things we have become aware of, we don’t fail to pass on this information to people around us, sometimes even when the information is not asked for.

The result of the above phenomenon is that there are a lot of “enlightened” citizens in our world today, and yet our world is none the better for it. An analogy of this, from the blogging world, is the large number of “How to make money blogs”, but only a few blogs actually making money.

It is like everyone wanting to change the world, but no one wanting to change.

In addition,  all the preaching and the gleaned knowledge – that we have, but don’t practice – can make us feel like someone we are not. So, it is in our best interests if we don’t preach what we don’t practice. Instead, we should practice what we become aware of, and then, maybe, preach what we practice.