A friend asked why living without beliefs and certainty looks so impractical. How can we embrace uncertainty practically? I don't know how to answer this question. So, let's presume that we are in 1900AD. Now, the practical Indians have reconciled themselves to slavery. They want to remain happy, and for that happiness, they want certainty. Now, certainty can come in two different ways. Either we believe that we are never going to be free and reconcile ourselves to the fact and accept that we are slaves, or try to gather some moments of happiness within that slavery. If not something big, let's be happy with the small things. Or we have hope that we will be free soon. If we have hope, there is a greater chance that our hopes will be shattered, and we will become sad. That's how a practical mind calculates the possibilities and accepts the first solution that we will continue to remain slaves, but will try to find a few moments of happiness here and there.
But we also had freedom fighters who fought for freedom. When Bhagat Sight accepted death laughingly, what would have gone through his mind? When Mahatma Gandhi devoted his entire life to the freedom of the country, what would have gone through his mind? Was it hope? Were they so impractical? So far as I have studied the lives of some of the freedom fighters, I understand that people like Subhash Chandra Bose, Mahatma Gandhi, Sri Aurobindo, and Bhagat Singh were far more intelligent than the "practical" people. Then, why were their choices different from the choices made by the "practical" people? Was it because of hope? When they decided to give their lives to fight for the country's freedom, what went through their minds?
I think that decisions like that cannot be made by a calculating mind. The problem with the practical mind is that it has already assumed life's purpose. It has already made the fundamental hypothesis and is just trying to prove it. On the other hand, the freedom fighters have understood the futility of those beliefs and hypotheses. They have understood that if they live either in the hope that one day India will be free or in surrender to fate, they are not going to be happy at the end of the day. It is because either way, that belief will shatter one day, and there will be no going back then. They are able to see reality as it is, accept it, and, having accepted that, develop a strategy to take action befitting the challenge. I feel that truth, and truth alone, was at the centre of their decision. They did not accept any conclusion, be it hope or surrender.
I feel that it's easy to live either with hope or to surrender to fate. But either way, we have taken a comfortable path. We have just decided to continue living according to our beliefs and to close our eyes to reality. To be constantly aware of reality is tough. Actually, if we try to convince some "practical person" that what the freedom fighters did was right, his calculating brain may still reject it even after seeing the consequences, because his brain has decided to believe what he wants to believe is correct. I think it is almost impossible for a brain that is so certain to understand what it means to observe constantly and remain open to the world of possibilities. A practical mind can't understand how people decide to sail through the ocean of uncertainty. For it, every Columbus and Vasco da Gama is stupid.
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