In a world that has witnessed the existence of great human beings such as Buddha, Jesus, Mahatma Gandi, Martin Luther King, mother Theresa and Nelson Mandella it is imperative that we realize the value and importance of being selfless, giving and forgiving. We are all caught up in a tangle maze of selfish desires of our own that, as human beings, we have forgotten the importance of giving, sharing and caring. Instead we have learnt to embrace more and more greedily for just ourselves, to cherish our own lives. We have learnt to leave behind and turn away from people who have loved, cared and nurtured us through thick and thin over the years just in a heartbeat that it makes me wonder sometimes whether we have any humanity left in us at all. We blindly, endlessly chase behind lifeless materialistic things seeking our own comfort that sometimes we do not even realize that we are stealing lives away in that process. In our selfishness we lie, cheat, steal and even kill. It seems as though conscience has escaped our minds, our sense of right and wrong has died.
We are all caught up in a spiral going straight in the direction of destruction, disorder and chaos that it is important that at least now we realize the weight of the consequences of our actions. We always make everyone else an excuse for our wrong doings. We always say, “he lies, she lies, everyone else lies, so I lie too”. We always say “he is selfish, she is selfish, everyone else is selfish, and so I am selfish too, to save my own skin, to gain advantage, it is important in this time and age”. We always justify saying it is about the survival of the strongest. We always defend our wrongs saying it is just the way of survival. So each day, more people lie, more people give and take bribes, more people cheat and steal, and they even take lives. And we fail to realize that it is us, only us, who suffer through the consequences again. Look around, there are approximately 17 000 murders a year, in the US alone; that is 45 murders a day. Approximately 20 000 murders take place annually in South Africa, 30 000 murders annually in Russia, and over 40 000 murders annually in Brazil. There had been 32 000 murders recorded in India, in the year of 2007 alone.
Moreover, nations have set out seeking power, land and wealth, always leaving behind wars that have only killed millions of people and left millions more who have had to suffer through poverty, starvation, sorrow, and loss of hope. How much clearer must it get after witnessing humanity suffer through two great world wars that have swallowed more number of lives than what we would ever learn to count in our life time? How much clearer must it get before we finally realize that in the bigger picture, the selfish decisions we make can cause suffering to a great many including ourselves? Do we even care? Do we ever even stop to think?
Furthermore, how selfish must a man become, before he becomes bold and brave to savagely play and toy around with another human’s life, another human’s future, for just a moment of pleasure? It is estimated that a woman in Africa is more likely to be raped than to be taught how to read. Approximately a woman is raped every 17 seconds in Africa, a woman is raped every 45 seconds in the US. One of every 200 women in the UK were reported as raped in 2006 alone, having a rape rate of 230 per day that year.
There had been 14 005 615 people charged for crimes in the year of 2008 in the US alone. There had been 880 000 reported crimes in 2008 in the UK.
And we must understand that as long as we keep justifying our wrong doings taking others as examples, these numbers will just continue to increase. And tomorrow might be your day, or maybe mine, to pay our dues with our lives.
A minority of people enjoy most of the resources, wealth, power and luxuries while a large majority starve and suffer; a minority have stolen the lives and dreams of a large majority. And we still collect and collect, without stopping to think that every time we try to take hold of more of what should have been shared amongst many, it makes thousands more people poor and forces hundreds more to be thieves. And we gather and collect till someone steals it all away. We collect with greed and selfishness in our hearts, as though we would own them for all eternity. We have forgotten that when the lights go out, we must leave it all behind. The path we’ve chosen does not end in paradise, it ends in our own demise. We need to open our eyes, open our minds, and see beyond our selves to cure this cancer we have designed.
We must remember, as a society, we must all reap what we have sown. It is time that we stopped this spiral heading downwards and started moving it the other direction.
They taught us this Sinhala poem when I was in grade one. Though what it said was really simple, it took me almost 15 years to understand what it really meant. It was so simple and yet so full of meaning that I was amazed how we never realize or even stop to think about any of it. It simply meant that even if a tree is filled with fruits, we must pluck only that many that we can devour, and nothing more, for those fruits are there to be enjoyed by many others too, and not just a few. Is it not amazing how far a simple thought can go? We say we think, for we exist, but do we stop to think at all, what we have been, what we have become?
What if someone says no to a bribe today instead of saying yes? What if someone tells the truth instead of a lie? What if someone spares another man’s life instead of killing? What if someone forgives another instead of raging out to harm? What if someone gives another a flower instead of a gun to kill?
A wide raging river first begins with small springs that come together, and it finds its way to the ocean and nothing can stand in its way. It has to start somewhere at some point, so why not let it be today, right here, right now? What if we can learn to be like those springs that strengthen the river instead of being mountains that try to reach higher than the others?
Maybe, just maybe, there will be a day, that we will learn to look beyond our selves. A day that everyone will speak the truth and not lie or cheat. A day that no one will give or accept a bribe. A day that everyone will learn to forgive. A day that everyone will learn to give and share, and not steal. A day that people will come forth to save a life, instead of to steal that life away. A day that people will learn to love, and not hate. If we ever learn to be selfless, we would be able to see the day, where not only the fittest, but even the weakest will survive and prosper, a day that no one will be left behind.
And we would finally be that river, finding our way to the ocean, and nothing would stand in our way. And there would be a day, after our youth is long since gone and the lines on our faces are ever so clear, that we would be able to look in the mirror with our heads up high and think to ourselves, we won, we overcame the struggle of life, we never gave up on what was good in this world, and we never died inside, we always lived, we lived as human beings, and we saved a future, for the children who’d be born tomorrow.
V.
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