The dark side of the truth
Living in a highly competitive environment which guarantees materialistic rewards for obeying its rules can be a life altering experience at multiple levels. I do not wish to detail the obvious implications in one’s life when due to sheer luck one happens to belong to any of those strata of our society which are validated and favored by the prevalent economic structures - getting comfortably placed at a relatively higher level of basic existence with access to plenty of sustenance tools and a seemingly secure future is the elemental life alteration which does commonly takes place, but before I dare to unravel the dark side of the truth, let me ask you, dear reader -
What do you think is the most important thing in your life?
Do you feel good when you have a lot of money to spend after you are done taking care of your monthly expenses? Do you feel nice when you can walk into any shop and buy anything you lay your eyes on? Does it make you feel good when you can have anything you wish for? Do you like it when you can influence a lot of people or control them?
Is it important to you to be someone to be somebody to be important? Are achievements the most important thing in your life? Is it in your gut – I have to succeed, to be the best, to be the first no matter what?
Is yours supposed to be the prettiest face in the room? Does having that special someone to share a meal with or to talk to matter more than the price tag of things you can buy? Or is it family and friends before anything else?
Different people value different things. Growth has come to me while being surrounded by them all – I have seen people for whom it is very important to succeed, to be famous and to be powerful. I have seen men, handsome men who want to stay handsome forever. I have seen people in love who really do not care about anything else. I have seen those who are driven, who are focussed, who are intelligent, who are just really really good humans, who are multi-talented and some who are just plain brilliant. Sometimes I have worked alongside these people. Sometimes I have worked against them. Sometimes I have shared a table in the library or perhaps a coffee and some of the other times I have spoken to them. And their words most of which were left unsaid have made me very very sad.
In those unsaid words they spoke to me of their families and their childhood. The kid that I was, still am, with my own understanding of the functioning of this world I had naively held the impression that all creation takes place in happiness - sadness just altered people but in true happiness they created. After a considerable amount of time I realised that meaning and happiness can be distinct, very distinct. So it clearly surprised me to find many brilliant fellow students with not so brilliant families and pasts.
It is a trivial psychological fact that children are an image of their parents and that early childhood exposures shape not only our subconscious mind being but also our very active conscious mind, the one that makes us think believe that we are making our life choices solely based on our free will. What broke my heart was when I saw minds so genuine so true so warm so kind being plagued by the obvious personality effects of misunderstood experiences of young age.
Most of them are helpless; they cannot talk to anyone about this, given the stigma attached to issues like these in our society. They do not know what to do, they do not know who to talk to, they think it is their fault somehow and for a mind which can make sense of clearly complicated equations real life and people’s actions make no sense at all.
A child is born and then the young impressionable mind is thrown into the chaos of the daily grind of a family in an Indian society. He is brought up in a culture where kids are taught to respect their parents and not love them, where kids are told to follow commands and not talk to their parents. These are very clichéd accusations; the reality is that the closed nature of the Indian family has disfigured the beautiful relation of a parent and a child. The hypocrisy that we see so widespread in our country has been drilled into us through our families – for that every single time when we have chosen lies over the truth and refused to stand by our understanding of how things are or what we want and given in to the demands of the very irrational norms around us – for that every single time we have done nothing more but helped perpetuate this hypocrisy.
This hypocrisy to ourselves to our wants to our desires to our minds has affected every form of human interaction known to Indians. It has also given many dark shades to what could otherwise have been ideal relationships – between a husband and a wife or a father and a son. And so continues the circle of screw-ups. My parents messed me up so I will mess up my son – for better or for worse. We think we will not but then in the end we do become like them.
Some of us accept this the way that it is. Some of us never bother to think (many people say that people don’t think, but how can it be?). Some of us play along and come up with an absurd code of ethics which makes us very good engineers or doctors but really terrible human beings, some of us are really lucky and for them this chapter is just a glimpse into the dark side of the human nature but then there are some of us who cannot understand why things are the way they are.
What is the most important thing in your life?
For me it is my freedom of mind. My freedom to choose my own ways of self-construction or self-destruction.
Before I write further, dear reader please keep in mind that there is fine difference between a luxurious life and a qualitative life. I am not saying that one usually comes at the cost of the other or that those who are lucky enough to have one lose out on the other. No. There is absolutely no proper way to draw such conclusions. We perhaps have an idea of what a materialistically comfortable life should look like but then the standards are again dependent on the user – comfortable life for who – you, me, the Ambanis, Bill Gates, Federer or Paris Hilton?
And as far as the quality of life is concerned, the assessment cannot ever be objective. One of the movies[6] of recent times states the point with precise clarity – the key characters are physically disabled and so so very poor and yet they are content with their lives.
If the relations between the most important things in our lives had been simply linear the human race could have one universal non-biological platform to unite on. Subjectivity and perspectives are the biggest culprits and so are our minds; else really things, could have been much simpler.
Because what are traditions and cultures if not tolerated collective perspectives on practises and behaviours on a universal mode of human conduct?
I think they don’t understand what you are trying to tell them, the girl says, make it simpler.
What I am trying to say is - end this hypocrisy. Please. Please be honest in your thoughts and in your actions. Do not marry if you are not in love. Do not have more kids than you can take care of. Do not lie. Do not cheat. Do not take part in corruption.
Be strong, be brave, be courageous. Do the right thing. Raise better families. Set an example.
India is the way that it is because of its families. We teach terrible manners to our kids. We teach them to disrespect women and we force them to score good marks. We kill their spirit and they grow up to be just like us.
It’s time to change the way parenting works in India. It is time to make it more responsible, more open and more honest.
Everything will fall in place after that.
You think they will understand, the girl asks me. If they think about it a bit, I think they will, I tell her.
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[6]Barfi, 2012 by Anurag Basu
Validation in the form of a few claps is the new drug. Compliment that thought with this post on Following Your Passion and How to deal with the nothingness later. Thank you.
