Yesterday, I had an opportunity to interact with a few children and women at an NGO in Nagpur. I went there for the second time. It was really a thought-provoking session for me. The girls there are away from their homes, and in most cases, they either do not know their families' whereabouts or, even if they do, their families are not willing to take them back. They are struggling to be on their feet somehow. They have real problems. Some of them are unable to read or write. Some of them are not in good mental health, yet all of them are determined to do something and improve their lives. 3-4 girls are preparing for a nursing course, one girl is doing a B.Sc., and one has done a BCA. Some are doing the beauty parlor course. I told them that their story is actually inspiring for so many people living in the world of bureaucracy, which I belong to, and who feel depressed over small issues without having an iota of an idea of the real problems of the world
I asked the girls there 2-3 times whether they had fear, and all of them very convincingly denied it. On the contrary, the privileged admit and take pride in their fear. They fear losing what they have. They have the positions and power, and they are often afraid to lose them. I know many bureaucrats are going to Tantriks and Astrologers to seek remedies to retain their power positions. Do we get more to become more fearful? Those girls have no time to be afraid. They have a life-or-death situation before them, and they are somehow making efforts to survive. On the other hand, the privileged people have all the time in the world to think of the future and be depressed when they anticipate things not going as per their wish-list.
It's strange to see how people get their eyes off the greatest blessings in their lives. Why are able-bodied people unable to remember the blessings of God that all their body parts are working well? Probably, we are lost in comparison. Comparison with the people who have more resources than we do. The greedy ego wants to have everything. Even if only one out of 100 things is unavailable, it makes an issue out of it like a stubborn child. It is always afraid of losing each and every one of the remaining 99. That's so strange. I tried to contemplate a lot on the reason for the same.
As I understand it, the reason is that we lose touch with the ground reality. We stop interacting with the people who have 1, 2, or 3. We are constantly in the company of people who have 99 or more, and therefore take 99 as normal. In fact, there is a social narrative that helps perpetuate this hallucination. Society also appreciates the achievers. Every achievement is appreciated and awarded. That's why every person who has 99 wants one more, then gathers 99 more, then one more to round off. This process goes on. In the process, we lose touch with the ground reality. That's why that missing "one" is sufficient to make us depressed. The more I interact with people like the girls in that Nagpur NGO, the more I am convinced that the real problem is not a scarcity of resources, but a "sense of entitlement". People are busy making their retirement functions memorable, failing to realise that it is high time to find something meaningful rather than wasting the remaining years with the memories of that function. Unless we shift from "I want to have" to "I love to do", not much is going to change in our lives.
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