B1 - Perspective

There are people dying to throw/push you down. They want to steal from you, cheat you, deceit you, scorn you, ensure you fail – you name the nasty things, they want to do all of it. They want to cut corners with you despite the fact that you have done your job well. They want to take you down. Your angry, irritated, frustrated. This life in Mumbai, this terrible traffic, this fucked up lifestyle, sedentary, tiresome, struggle-some. Is it worth it? For every 1 good person there are 5 nasty ones, who want to put you down. What should you do?

Fight, scream for your rights, go to court, or atleast threaten to go to court, protest, morcha, strike! If your somebody as strong willed as Anna Hazare your voice is heard, but then again he is an exception; if you’re a big guy with connections all over the place; a reasonable chance that you will be heard, but if your a common man like me in this struggle-some life, you have to find ways to threaten X company’s reputation, pretentiously make noise, pretend as if you can run their reputation, maybe the company will listen, maybe they wont. But you do stand a little less than 50% chance. But if you are my house help, you don’t stand a chance. Unfortunate for him, and I say it with all my heart, he was not as lucky as me to be born to a struggling middle class family where he could be educated. You think he will be able to make a difference. He works extremely hard to earn his bread butter, not to say that, you and I and the big guy with the connections doesn’t, we all do. But he invests his body and mind, and his returns are significantly disproportionally to ours.

What should be done? This bastardly act of people all around who want to put you down, teaches you one of two things. Join the crowd and do the same else stand up tall. If you stand up tall, it requires balls of steel. There is only and only misery and suffering all around you. People around you will make fun of you; your life will be terribly difficult because you chose to walk a lone journey of sticking to your morals and not joining the crowd. Your very own loved ones will not understand you. Not because they don’t want to. They want to. But how can they, they aren’t looking at the world they way you are.

Imagine this. Your one family traveling going from place X to place Y. The car has place for 5 of which all 5 are occupied. Despite the journey being the same, the same car, each one see’s a different view. The driver see’s cars coming head on from the other side of the road, the person seated behind him, is able to see a glimpse of the same car passing by. Same car. Same place. Everything is the same. Just a timing mismatch. The driver see’s it in a different perspective only 1 second before the person behind him. Both are never on the same page. One saw it earlier. One saw it latter. One saw the full car, one maybe saw half the car. This is true in the case of humans as well. Parents have experienced their life, and maybe have been at the same place where their child is today. They want to explain the child their wisdom their learning’s, and they try to. However, the child is the person who was sitting behind in the car. How can he understand that there is a car passing by? Only when he has a direct experience of it, he will be able to respect what you were saying to it. Till then it means nothing to him.