"An ounce of practice is worth more than tons of preaching. " - Mahatma Gandhi

       

         When traveling through the underground train system of London one summer, I came across a poster proclaiming "An ounce of practice is worth more that tons of preaching." The picture underlying the words was a picture of a earth revolving clockwise with three hand surrounding it; it's a crystal clear image imprinted in my brain. I remember just standing there pondering on what the image meant. Standing there for so long in deep thought made me almost missed my train. Now that I think about it, it didn't only make me almost miss my train but I don't really remember anything about the subway ride but I do remember almost everything before coming across the poster: the summer rain showers pattering on my red umbrella, the subway sign that had a red circle surrounding the word underground, a crowd surrounding a street performer, a women sitting alone with headphones crying by herself , and then blank. Throughout the whole day I couldn't find the meaning behind the picture and to this day it still bugs me in the back of my head.

       Sitting there I thought of how Gandhi was saying that teaching verbally only gets you partially there, but what takes you most of the way there is yourself through whole hearted practice. It made me think of my dance rehearsals where my instructor would demonstrate and tell us how to do it and teach us but then she would tells us that being able to do whatever she taught us, only 2% of the ability to do it came from her instruction, the remaining 98% came from ourselves mentally being able to have the strength and confidence to practice it and master it adjusting to our own problems. I think throughout my life so far has been one of the best pieces of advice because it shows that the ability to do something comes from within oneself and it may become harder but if you can push through, you can do it! I realized then that everything that we do applies to Gandhi's quote when it comes to university professors lecturing to sports to the very first things we learn when growing up, would be nothing if we just sat there and took in lectures without actually experiencing things by ourselves.

         Many rebelling teenagers might respond to their nagging parents lectures about not making idiotic mistakes and to learn from their mistakes by saying "Let me learn from my own mistakes!" Yes that is partially true because that is how we grow but taking their warning in consideration won't hurt but rather benefit someone from making a disastrous mistake. Just like Gandhi says a little bit of practice outweighs a bucnh of preaching but he doesn't say that preaching is entirely useless, it's just that we learn more from experience, which is true when you think about it. Many of these teens that don't take their parents warning seriously make that mistake and end up learning the hard way.
      

      Still to this day I don't think I'll ever understand that meaning of that picture but maybe, one day when I return to England I'll go back to that underground railroad station in London and stare at that picture once again (hopefully it's still there); maybe with more life experiences as I age I will finally figure it out.