Aggression is like a ‘fiery’ ploy,
It can either light up or destroy!
Human body secretes two types of saline liquids. Tears overflowing the eyelids of a person would dampen his face and evoke pity in the hearts of the people witnessing them. On the flip side, pearls of sweat streaking down the cheeks of a toiler driven by aggression stir up inspiration among others. It’s all up to us what we want to shed! Aggression is the best fence-cum-defence. What constructive role aggression plays in one’s life could be gauged from the fact that a lion despite being shorter in height and lesser in weight draws fear in the mind of an enormous elephant owing to its sheer aggressive trait as it would pounce upon its prey fearlessly tearing it apart into pieces for its food. Exhibiting the needful readiness to attack or confront the opponent/adversity is equally important to the leader of a group. This is the reason as to why a herd of sheep led by a lion is far safer than a flock of lions led by a sheep. There is no place for apprehension or trepidation or cowardliness in all spectrums of life. Knights on their horseback armed with lances engaging in a sporting jousting tournament are expected to go after their opponents at full steam, and the one who manifests courage, belligerence, smartness, and agility better than the other is able to pierce the armour of his opponent and emerge as winner. In a laconic manner, in every sport or sphere of life, winners show the requisite to morph their inner aggression into wall of defence and use the stock smartly in order to keep fuelling their inner fire to go hard at their set targets. There are two types of aggression—covert and overt. Different personalities have in them one common trait which is either to show it openly or the other one who tend to give precedence to aggressive work over aggressive demeanour.
India has unfortunately repeatedly been attacked by Pakistan yet a few leaders have shown the grit to give go ahead to put an end to the nefarious activities being sponsored from Pakistan’s soil. Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi swore in by the slain soldiers of the country to wreak vengeance for that assault so that their supreme sacrifice does not go waste and a few days later, the whole nation celebrated the valour of the Indian Air Force in teaching Pakistan a lesson for life, one quote which toned in perfectly with the then ticklish situation read something like this; ‘Aggression is the best defence’. The Indian fighter jets dropped bombs inside Pakistan mainland in retaliation for the attack claimed by the ‘Jaish-e-Mohammad’ and gave a resounding lesson to the world. India knows the art of fighting back as much as spreading the message of peace and harmony.
Frustration and expectation of the spectators had started taking a toll on Sachin Tendulkar’s psyche when he couldn’t perform at par with his tall standards in a string of matches. His father became his saviour and rightfully advised him not to lose his bearings and let his bat, not the angry tongue, do the talking for him. It simply underscores a lesson for life for those who often mistake aggression for rudeness, temerity or impunity. If you try to hurt other people or to intimidate them into toeing by the line drawn by you forcefully, it is a sign of weakness rather than strength.
On the opposite side, the so-called modern master, Virat Kohli’s open and blunt aggressive approach to cricket where he would vent out his anger publicly might have raised a few eyebrows at the beginning of his career, but as the time flew by, his own critics started heaping praise on the quantum of desperation shown by him on the ground strongly backed by unparallel set of records in his name. Nevertheless, it is to be noted that the candid display of the belligerence or willpower to achieve targets is not a mandate to be followed for sure. Sometimes silent assertiveness and dynamism serve as an effective fuel to the progression. How a simple lowly lad of Rameshwaram, who would fling newspapers into the homes to make his both ends meet gradually went on to earn the epithet, ‘The Missile Man of India’ is a story well known to the world. Having short height and long sight, our celebrated scientist and former President Late Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam had faced a lot of failures during his initial phases, but he never lost his calm and composed outward behaviour with each individual he came across. So, ultimately the era came when rockets and missiles assembled under his persistent patronage successfully went zooming into the skies, causing every Indian to take a humble bow at his marvelous expertise without a tint of smug or haughtiness. Aggression was his weapon as well, that was concealed and what revealed later on was endless string of aerial accomplishments trailing submissively in his name.
Nature is no far from showing aggression in its own defence whenever humans have gone overboard in exploiting it for their own needs by causing floods, famine, cyclones and so on. A river journey, right from the apex till it drains itself into the seas and oceans, too, is not immune to aggression. It has to face a lot of breakers during its journey full of unseen and unexpected obstacles which would begin right from the tip of the mountain, knocking over endless number of stones and gravels. Hidden in its long winded journey are many crucial lessons worth adopting in routine human life. The river never gets scared of taking long tortuous and treacherous path marked by numerous hairpin bends and shows never-to-stop attitude till the goal is achieved. Albeit, there indeed underlies an important case on the promptness shown by the river for switching the plans whenever required especially as its gushing currents crash into a mass of huge immovable and insurmountable boulders. Changing the course’s path by showing much needed strength of character to bend and mould according to the circumstances without allowing its inner rush to drop down, the river shows how flexible methods are employed to achieve the stubborn goals without changing the attitude into the bargain. A pen is deemed the writer’s sword. When the nib distributes ink on the writing surface, what the quality and intensity of the content will be directly depends on what is going on in the mind of the writer. Aggression when poured onto the paper in rightful manner has brought about historic revolutions by issuing challenges related to the oppressive rules of the imposing regimes and had scripted history in their own words for the betterment of the world. India would have never been able to wriggle itself free of the shackles of the British rule, had the gung-ho patriots like Bhagat Singh and Udham Singh not shown their extreme fury and reservation against the untoward tyranny of the English rulers and embraced gallows with immense happiness to make their mother India an independent nation.
Neither does the never-die attitude ebb away at the expense of one’s comfort nor should be subject to transitory adverse circumstances in one’s life. A runner who is committed to lifting aloft the winner’s title might not always get smooth featherbed strips to run along. There is a reasonable likelihood of the smooth path petering out into rough, twisting, dusty and bumpy tracks, but by no means should he/she think over softening their robust stand they carried at the very beginning owing to the situations getting tougher with every turn. The graph of the toughness of the situation may go up or down, but attitude lost is equal to opportunity lost to take a lead in the undertaking.
Calculative aggression is even more critical since it has been seen that people who are unable to contain their fury sometimes shoot at their own feet in lieu of shooting down the targets. Channelising energy in the right direction is the best way to go forward with guaranteed positive results by stopping aggression to turn into anger and be the means of hara-kiri (self-destruction). Thereby, hang some interesting tales in this context which depict as to why despite putting lot of efforts and showing lot of aggression some people remain also-rans. Once Formula One racer kept repeatedly pressing down the accelerator right down to the mat with intense fury, yet car won’t move since there was no fuel in it. Similarly, once there was a lunatic man hell-bent upon moving the wall so he kept making forlorn attempts to push it, soaking in profuse sweat. It’s important to show aggression in whatever task we undertake, however, it is to be committed to memory that it is more important to ensure that aggression is tinged with elements like planning, forethought, purpose, sanity and above all, rationalism to see results tilt in our favour. Someone has rightly said, ‘Aggression and Patience if balanced can create wonders’.