And there is only one guarantee: none of us will see Heaven
Two friends were on a picnic on the lake in a boat. One of them took out a hand drill from his pocket and began to drill the hole in the floor of the boat.
His friend shouted ‘Are you crazy? What are you doing? The water will flood in, the boat will sink, and we will drown.’
The friend with the drill replied, ‘Don’t worry. I am just drilling the hole under my seat.’
We all have become very self-centered and have forgotten that we have been put on this planet for a purpose. Even if one of us behave selfishly, we would end up demolish everybody else. And that’s what the above story exactly depicts the truth of today’s world.
Each one of us is behaving like a cancer cell. A cancer cell is an organism that has no reference to the whole body. It lives separately and does not cooperate with the other cells of the body. Ultimately, the whole body dies along with the cancer cell. Who gains? Nobody!
So, a question rises, ‘Why are we behaving like cancer cells?’
How many of us have ever heard a tree saying, ‘the oxygen is only for the people I like?’ An apple tree saying, ‘Apples are for those whom I like the most.’ So, whatever the trees have to offer, offer it to everybody without being biased and selfish.
It is only we human beings who are biased and selfish in sharing what we have. We always choose who deserves and who doesn’t and this leads to separatist psychology. Separateness is the essence of humanity and this is what has been taught to us by our so-called cultured society. Our brains have been conditioned to believe right from our childhood in boundaries, customs, religions, and traditions. So, precisely we were born to be a human but we become something different but simply no humans.
We feel proud in calling and labeling ourselves as male, female, upper class, lower class, Indian, American etc. which separate us from the ‘others’. So, these ‘others’ are our competitors who have to be ‘battered’ at any cost so that we prove our superiority to them. And, such feeling of separation allows us to do all such things to each other which we would never do to ourselves.
So, instead of co-creating life TOGETHER, we are co-creating life APART. And this is the reason for conflict, war, hatred, and disagreement. This is why we hurt, compete and argue with each other. This is why we live in an unhappy world.
None of us sees life as it is. We all see life WE are. We look at others through our own likes and dislikes, prejudices, desires, and interest. Such an attitude has conditioned our mind ‘To divide rather than to unite’ and this has a history where we were always at war with one another. If humanity is always choosing to be at war, then how can human beings be ever happy?
Rishi Taparia
Head – Academic Affairs
