Yesterday, I watched Sully. It is based on the real life story of Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger who lands the damaged plane on Hudson river, miraculously saving all the 155 lives on board. He is charged for not landing on LaGuardia or Teterboro and for ‘risking’ the lives of the passengers and damaging the airplane.
He says, “42 years of successful landings, and they would still judge me for those 208 seconds.”
Did you catch it, yet?
Imagine he worked 5 days a week, 1 flight every day, and exclude the Christmas holidays too.
Number of successful landings = (5/7)*42*365*(11/12) = 10,037 flights
Number of passengers landed = 150*10,037 = 15,05,625
Before he was acquitted, they blamed him for those 208 stressful seconds where his reaction time was 35 seconds, and nobody actually gave a damn about his past record of landing more than 1.5 Million people safely. Even though, after landing, all he cared for was the count of “155”.
And here you have a very very harsh lesson to learn.
You can do 99 things for someone and all they'll remember is the one thing you didn't do.
Most people forget all the good that you did, and in the end only judge you for the bad, or rather what they perceive to be bad. Nobody cares about the good intent behind your actions. All they see is the final output. Simply because it’s easy to overlook the good, and remember the bad.
After a while, most people don’t give a damn about how much you have helped them. They take you for granted, because hey, you were just performing your duty or friendship. Just one bad thing, and they are all against you.
In personal life, be helpful without expecting too much from anyone. It’ll hurt you less. And if you are compromising on your comfort for helping anyone who isn’t worth it, then it’s time to think through and make a wise choice before it’s too late.
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