_Student:_ Who will ultimately appreciate your feats more — weightlifters or bodybuilders?

Sri Chinmoy: Bodybuilders know how difficult it is to lift heavy weights. Although their goal is not to lift very heavy weights, at the same time they know how much they struggle when they try to lift them.

Again, it is not a question of whether bodybuilders or weightlifters will appreciate these things more. It is only the heart of the person that matters. If a weightlifter has a good heart, he will appreciate them. We have to enter into each field with our heart. One person may be a singer, another may be a weightlifter. If the singer lives in his heart, he will appreciate the weightlifter also because he is shining in another field. Similarly, the weightlifter will appreciate the singer.

If we have a good heart, we will appreciate others. If we have a bad heart, we will criticise them or we will say, “If I had practised, I could have defeated that person. I could have become another Carl Lewis.” With ‘if’ we challenge the achievements of others. We say, “If I had had the opportunity, I could have done the same.” That is how we start blaming God right from the beginning. Why did God give the opportunity to Bill Rodgers to become the world’s fastest marathoner? Why did God allow Sir Edmund Hillary to climb up Mount Everest? Ask God. Find fault with God. But I tell you, even if God had given us the opportunity, we would not have valued it.

So many people come into the family of a great musician and yet they do not play music. So many people come into the family of a great runner, but they are not running. They do not value what their parents are doing. You see so many cases where the parents are great in a particular field, but the children do not follow in the footsteps of their parents. Opportunity came their way, but they did not value it.

From:Sri Chinmoy,A mystic journey in the weightlifting world, part 1, Agni Press, 2000
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