UPSC is not just another competitive exam. You can’t start and finish it off within a few months. Owing to its humongous syllabus, 3 different exam processes, and uncertainty of results, it is being considered as one of the toughest exams. Mere hardwork alone won’t guarantee you success here. We have to cultivate positive habits and remove the negative habits/ thoughts/ emotions from our personality. We have to use this UPSC process to self purify ourselves. Below is the illustration which describes how negative forces pull us downwards and become the major reasons for our failures when they act cumulatively.
On the slope of Long’s Peak in Colorado lies the ruin of a gigantic tree. Naturalists tell us that it stood for some four hundred years. It was a seedling when Columbus landed at San Salvador, and half grown when the pilgrims settled at Plymouth.
During the course of its long life it was struck by lightning fourteen times and the innumerable avalanches and storms of four centuries thundered past it. It survived them all. In the end, however, an army of beetles attacked the tree and leveled it to the ground. The insects ate their way through the bark and gradually destroyed the inner strength of the tree by their tiny but incessant attacks. A forest giant which age had not withered, nor lightning blasted, nor storms subdued, fell at last before beetles so small that a man could crush them between his forefinger and his thumb.
There is a parallel in this story which should serve as a warning to us. Most of us can survive times of crisis. We summon the strength of faith or resolve for most any battle that we face head on. Whether it is in our professional or personal lives, we often overcome great obstacles. It is the small things like jealousy, anger, resentment, pettiness and negativity that eat us from the inside, which often bring about our downfall. Unlike a giant tree, we can identify and fight those moral or ethical “beetles.” We must, however, be constantly on guard.
