Life worth 5 paise

Believe me, today is just another day when a small section of society loses their life to something as random as a stamped on a railway bridge. Yes, it is that petty when we sit back and think but then what it cost was the life of ~22 people and over 30 others severely injured. As the news channel tell the tale of this mishap each one of us sitting in our air conditioned offices or homes, start to wonder how such a thing happened, who started running like that, what caused the chaos, why didn’t people keep calm, and so on. But, behind our backs those people standing in a stuffed environment for about 30 minutes lose patience and start pushing each other out of frustration and/or fear; and there it goes…one negative feeling to other and then to mass destruction that can never, on this planet Earth, be undone!

As always we start off with what’s the simplest thing to do…blame others and do nothing at all about improving ourselves. We will sit and blame those people who were ‘MAD’ to go pushing each other and end up losing their lives; we will blame those railway authorities ‘who can’t even manage a crowd in an over populated city like ours’; we will go blaming right to the top, including the re-development authorities to the municipal corporation to the railway minister also…it never really ends. But then again, tomorrow will be a new day and we will find all people using the same old infrastructure, exactly the same way they did today – pushing, pulling, running, etc; and we will be in our safe domains taking up another topic online on social-media and practically doing nothing about it…absolutely nothing. The lives lost will be forgotten and this event – this disastrous event – will be nothing more than a page in some records that would not be referred to again.

When I read the news on my mobile news app, I was shocked as to – how can this happen so badly; and then I honestly, moved on to my work, not realising how bad or worse or worst it was. That’s what we always do, on a daily basis. We react to absolutely any news for a few seconds and then move on. Being in an equity research profession, the only thing I react to with some serious feelings and dedicated time, is that of corporate rejigs, financial results, takeovers, mergers, and so on. Just then a friend sent me a few videos and pictures of this so called ‘stamped’ that caused so many unforeseen and cruel deaths. I…I fell speechless, not only because it was a big news, but also because it stirred me up deep within my heart and soul. You certainly don’t want to watch some 15-20 people piled up on one another of which most are dead with blood oozing out of almost everywhere. And to top it all, the one thing I really wonder and feel scared about is that people are more engrossed in taking pictures and videos rather than helping those trapped ones out of the mess.

I wish all of us could do something in life to change even 1% of this. May be we must become calmer in life to take rational decisions even in times of crisis. May be we need to become a bit more considerate about one another and those who are in dire need of help. May be we just need to stop blaming each other and start following rules with some discipline. Let us understand that some delay in reaching a location is far far better than causing such lethal aftermath. We need to deal with accidents like collapsing towers and bridges, with some patient understanding that may help cause least loss. We can try and not reach a level of wear-and-tear that such a thing happens at all.

May be we actually need to be more ‘humane’ than what ‘humans’ are today. Life is not really worth 5 paise. It is an invaluable asset and one owes a lot to several others around them in form of relationships, responsibilities, love, affection, sacrifices and devotion.

The Unthinkable Trouble

I saw a video long back in which several people were asked. “What is the most difficult job in the whole world?” While the answers ranged from doctors to teachers to engineers to astronauts, the real answer was that of a farmer. Yes! Farmer’ The crux of the matter was that if there was no food producing community doing their job so diligently, there would be no civilised life at all.

Similarly, if I were to ask you, “what is the gravest problem in the world?” The answer could again have a vast range right from troubled relationships to a bad job environment to lack of opportunity to illiteracy to several hazardous diseases and so the list would go on. But if I had to tell you that all of these can be resolved to a great extent by actually overcoming one simple tiny looking problem which is – “Self Pity”.

Across the globe, a majority of people have been deeply indulging in ‘self pity’ day-in and day-out without even realising the serious and long lasting impact it causes on their minds, resulting further into an added list of new troubles. Now if I had to explain to you how this so called ‘self pity’ works and how it slowly spreads into one’s mind and then into the surrounding and then the community, you would be surprised at its mass destruction. Here I take this random example of a ‘bad work environment’.

The chairman of a company, upset with a new problem at work, bashes up his manager and the manager in turn ruins the day for his assistant. This Mr. Assistant then catches up with friends over a drink and gets drunk telling them his sad story at work. He then goes home and messes up with his wife and kids and they in turn hate him for being this way. Now if you notice, all of this wasn’t really needed. All that was required to be done was solving of the little problems at work with some calmness and level-headed thinking. And this could have been done by absolutely anyone who chose to break this chain of downward spiral of self pity. Wouldn’t’ things be totally different if instead of asking, ”why me?” they had said “let me”.

If we can decide and get rid of the constant ‘self pity’ towards only one problem of our lives each day – no matter how tiny it may be; and start making positive changes to improve the situation therein, you will actually have solved 7 problems of yours over a weeks time. Incidentally, you will have solved an average of 25 problems in a month (considering you may ponder on the same problem for more than a day, at times) and this would result in solving about 300 problems in a year. Now, that’s a huge number. And if I have to really sit back and calculate or rather list down the number of problems that one has in his/her life, the count is certainly much lesser.

So all it would take is just a few months of a diligent effort to stop practicing ‘self pity’ and start solving a particular problem with the utmost positive attitude. This would not only make you a happier human being but also create a surrounding effect towards making a happy home, a happy locality, a happy corporation and so on. Problems aren't really as big as they are made to appear, if and only if one chooses to think rationally towards solving them rather than indulging in self pity.