So, I ask myself this question everyday, 'What exactly is Life'? How do we define what our life is supposed to mean and what our life is supposed to lean into? Have all of you observed, that what we call life and the way we live it, is actually how everyone else leads it around us and that's how we define our definitions and that's how we fill our cup of tea.
Once in a blue moon do we find a a doctor's son doing event management, or a professor's son learning music, or a business man's son doing something! We live life how we manage to bring it into our brains. Like the doctor's son is growing in an environment where there is no value of time, more so, no value for family time, always place the importance of a set of procedures, and hence the son, ends up becoming a very successful man, very methodical, very practical and totally capable of taking his own decision, but it wont be his life that he's leading, it would just be a shadow that his parents have already drawn him, and he's just filling that shadow with his body.
Then again comes the professor, his life is methodical, boring, full of proofs and reasoning, and totally blinded to the finer aspects and beauties of life. The son grows up in a surrounding where knowledge is everything and the rest is just useless. These people become successful too, but they don't judge their success by counting how many days they have lived and enjoyed, but by how useful they have been to society and being an epitome of knowledge in their time and niche.
Then arrives the business man, laden with so much money and respect, he respects nothing, he does not know authority, and before family for him comes his success and money. The son too becomes like this, either a total douche of a human being, or a very powerful man with a heart of stone.
So, coming to the point, what is life? How should we live/ lead or lives? I'll give you a very nice example. As you all know I live in Dubai, and begging or asking any kind of alms here in public is an offense, that comes with a year in prison and after that you are deported. The person who's offering alms, is also put behind bars for a month. Everyone knows that here! But I saw this old lady, this was the time during the 'holy' month of Ramadan, she was lying on a by lane with a cup beside her, she was very obviously living there for quite a while now. Everyone walks right by her, everyone looks at her and turns a blind eye, thinking that its not their problem, and one fine gentleman calls the cops and informs them that there is an old lady here begging.
So enter the cops, they start helping the lady with whatever little luggage she has, and then they lead her towards their patrol car. One man who was standing and witnessing all of this, just walked towards the officers, and gave the lady a pocket full of money. The cops had to detain him too. When the cops asked the guy, why would you risk yourself and do such a thing when you know that you are gonna be put behind bars, and where did you get the money from?
The boy started his reply, "Sir, I am 22 now, I work in a nearby construction site, I have no family on this planet, and whatever I earn, I save and I have doing so for the past 5 years. I had finally decided to buy myself an education from the local university from my savings and I had withdrawn that much and some more for all the expenses. When I saw what was going on I realized two things, first that this lady was also like me and that she had no one to call her own, and I know how that feels; Secondly, I realized unlike me, she couldn't work and make her ends meet. So I had two choices, either turn a blind eye and be miserable for the rest of my life; or help her in someway and be miserable for a month but being peaceful for the rest of my life knowing that I have done something right and meaningful in this world."
For all those who didn't understand. The boy could have have just given the lady a few coins and they would land in the same situation as above, but the boy knew that when the lady was going to be extradited a year later, she would go back to her home country and still have the same fate as now ( a bylane and a cup to ask alms from), so he gave her all his money, and made sure that the lady was taken care of for a long time, by which atleast she could find some sort of solution to life till then.
That's how we should live too, enjoy and work, but not at the cost of others, and especially not at the cost of a needy person.
Hope this made you cry, or atleast emotional, because I know all my friends on Facebook are emotional, except you sharan! You Mofo!
Dedicated to Sharan and Vishvesh! Make a life, not a lie.
Yours Always,
Rohit A Banerjee
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