Skip to main content

Values

That trickling sweat has more value than all words, words, words

The greatest tragedy of evolution is that when the ape descended from the tree its heart refused to evolve.  The brain evolved and continues to do so giving us better and better technology.  The heart remains primitive giving us more and more violence and crimes.

Contradictory as it may seem, the solution lies in making people more rational.  The plain truth is that our thoughts determine our feelings and behaviour.  Irrational thoughts produce irrational behaviour.  If I think that my religion is the only correct religion and my god is the only true god, I’ll go around inflicting my religion and god on others.  The solution is to question my thinking.  Is my religion the only correct one?  Is my god the only true god?  That is rational thinking. 

Take it at a still more practical level.  My worth depends on the appreciation I receive for the works I do.  This is irrational thinking.  People will love me only if I am fair and lovely.  This is irrational thinking.  I have to be a winner wherever I am and whatever I’m doing.  This is irrational thinking.  Yet most people are driven by such thinking.  Hence we have unnecessary competition, rivalry, jealousy, greed, and all the sins that pollute the Ganga endlessly. 

Hence the first thing to do is to develop rational thinking.  Challenge your thoughts rationally and you begin to see a different world.  Life changes.  Magic descends into life.  The rainbow begins to glitter behind the clouds. 

The conflict between the heart and the brain begins to melt.  That leads to integrity, the second value (the first being rational thinking).  Integrity means wholeness.  Reason and emotion are synchronised to create a symphony.  Life becomes as sweet as mellifluous music.  Plain honesty becomes the habit.  Masks vanish.  You are what you are.  You don’t have to pretend.  You don’t have to go around exercising your oratorical skills to hoodwink people to vote for you.  People will vote for you.  You don’t have to spend crores on publicity.  People see through you.  People see your integrity.  They admire you.  You are the real hero. 

Real heroism is driven by compassion. The real hero understands the situation with clarity.  Genuine understanding leads to our obligation towards fellow beings, towards the planet, towards even the stone on which we tread. 

The genuine hero is not sarcastic.  The genuine hero is not cynical.  The genuine hero does not need oratory and histrionics.  Propaganda is out.  Advertisement is redundant.  Words are not required.  Actions speak.  Action.  Action that emerges from rational thinking, integrity and compassion.  A brave new world emerges. 

My dream.  My utopia.  My contribution to IndiSpire Edition 199:

What are the 3 most important values that you would teach your child? #responsibleparent

Comments

  1. Hindi SudhaNovember 29, 2018 at 1:50 PM

    Your worth should & must depend only on what you do or what makes you feel happy & satisfied. Not on the appreciation of others for your work or something.
    Indeed I strongly agree that the Real heroism is driven by compassion.
    Anyways, thanks for sharing.
    -
    Thanks & Stay Blessed - Sheetal

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
47 comments
Read more

The Veiled Women

One of the controversies that has been raging in Kerala for quite some time now is about a girl student’s decision to wear the hijab to school. The school run by Christian nuns did not appreciate the girl’s choice of religious identity over the school uniform and punished her by making her stand outside the classroom. The matter was taken up immediately by a fundamentalist Muslim organisation (SDPI) which created the usual sound and fury on the campus as well as outside. Kerala is a liberal state in which Hindus (55%), Muslims (27%), and Christians (18%) have been living in fair though superficial harmony even after Modi’s BJP with its cantankerous exclusivism assumed power in Delhi. Maybe, Modi created much insecurity feeling among the Muslims in Kerala too resulting in some reactionary moves like the hijab mentioned above. The school could have handled it diplomatically given the general nature of Muslims which is not quite amenable to sense and sensibility. From the time I shi...
13 comments
Read more

Insecurity and Exclusivism

“ Hindu khatare mein hai.” This was one of the first slogans that accompanied the emergence of Narendra Modi on the national scene. It means Hindus are in Danger . It reveals a deep-rooted feeling of insecurity. Hindus constitute an overwhelming majority in India – 80%. All the high positions in governance, judiciary, academics, any significant place, are occupied by Hindus. Yet the slogan was born. Strange? It will be facile to argue that Modi used this slogan and its concomitant hatred of Muslims and Christians as a political weapon for winning votes. True, he was successful in that; he rose to the highest political post in the country using minority-bashing. But the hatred did not end with that achievement; rather it spread outward and became more exclusive. Muslim and European rulers of India were booted out from the country’s history books and wherever else possible like the names of roads and institutions. With vengeance. Now there is a concerted effort going on to place In...
30 comments
Read more

The Real Enemies of India

People in general are inclined to pass the blame on to others whatever the fault.  For example, we Indians love to blame the British for their alleged ‘divide-and-rule’ policy.  Did the British really divide India into Hindus and Muslims or did the Indians do it themselves?  Was there any unified entity called India in the first place before the British unified it? Having raised those questions, I’m going to commit a further sacrilege of quoting a British journalist-cum-historian.  In his magnum opus, India: a History , John Keay says that the “stock accusations of a wider Machiavellian intent to ‘divide and rule’ and to ‘stir up Hindu-Muslim animosity’” levelled against the British Raj made little sense when the freedom struggle was going on in India because there really was no unified India until the British unified it politically.  Communal divisions existed in India despite the political unification.  In fact, they existed even before the Briti...
16 comments
Read more

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
19 comments
Read more