- Duty of being Obedient and Patient - April 8, 2020
- Optimism without action is a dangerous game - April 4, 2020
- The Ideal Master - March 21, 2020
There are a few really difficult things in the world. One of them is wilful acceptance of things that we cannot change. We hear elderly people advising us to accept things or people as they are. They say it would give us peace of mind. Perhaps it would also give us satisfaction and may be happiness too. We can get satisfaction in accepting situations and people since acceptance will show our strength. This seems the right thing to do. Otherwise we would unnecessarily struggle with life. And all this should be done willfully!!
But when we think about the big changes that people have brought in, we cannot sideline the fact that for achieving something really big, the first thing is dissatisfaction with the present situation. Discoveries or inventions have had the root cause a certain degree of non-acceptance of situation. One would not always say that about people. It would be always desirable to accept our near and dear ones as they are. But in case of situations, non-acceptance, at times, would help us discover newer ways of living our life. Otherwise all of us would be satisfied with the world as it is. No one would dream of a world as it aught to be. Literature shows us the world as it aught to be. The imagination of artists, the curiosity of the young minds, the efforts of the scientists and the wisdom of the experienced people, if combined together, can create wonders. It can make our life more comfortable, more worth living. It might give us answers to our incessant questions.
And so dissatisfaction or non-acceptance of things can trigger the process of change. Wise people would say that we cannot change bigger things like the social system or the educational system or the political scenario of a particular country. It is unfortunately very true. But atleast when we voice our dissatisfaction through our actions or words, we set the change in motion. Some time in future, perhaps not in our life time, the desired change can happen. We might not be there to witness it. But it would happen. Perhaps Socrates also had dreamt of a society wherein the young minds would be motivated by the question-answer method. They would also go by the scientific way. They would start thinking for to ask questions, you must first think about the issue. Perhaps the women reformers of the West and the East also took the first step towards realizing women’s strength by doing their bit. They too had to fight for their voting rights. They still have to struggle to get their voice heard in a male-dominated world. But we have really come a long way in the past two centuries.
The desired change might take a long time to happen, perhaps longer than our lifetime. But action taken in the desired direction is better than only cribbing about the situation. We might not succeed now, but can you say we will not succeed ever?
The revolutionaries of all the marginalized societies, must have also felt that they might not win, but did it stop them from fighting for freedom and equality? In the same way, the social and political systems might be faulty now, nay, they are faulty, but they can and they will change for the better one day. Let us all have this faith in our hearts.
l Stop sitting on the fence
l Stop cribbing
l Cut the ropes that tie you down
l Think out of the box for problems that are new
l Be ready for opportunities
l Don’t think of the problem, but of the probable solutions
l Remember: Doers are better than criticizers, appreciators and inerts.
Having said this, how do we keep going in difficult times? How not to lose patience while struggling to bring the change? How to think long term and not get affected by the short term failures? In short, how to view all this objectively?
I invite all of you to answer these questions with your personal experiences and help others. Together we can make a difference and change the way we think!! Please feel free to express yourself.
