The Philosophy of Life - 1

I am starting a series called “The philosophy of life” wherein I would pen down some of the aspects/events of life that are inevitable and aim at imparting a lesson to those who are ready to learn from the bitter/sweet realities in their journey from womb to the tomb. One of the aspect that has recently propelled me to share is centered on the importance we give to various people we meet in this journey.

Right from birth an infant comes across different people. Some have a profound effect on his personality and some just come and go without making a considerable impact on him. As a result of this direct or indirect interaction with people, he inculcates few of the things and that becomes a part of his personality and stay with him all through his life. Now when I say that the interaction has an impact on the personality of the person it is quite evident that he must have given high importance to that person and as a result he has borrowed something from him in the process. But when I look at this process from the perspective of the other person, the story of life seems to be a bit ironical. There also exist people who give a lot of importance to us (infant) but most of us don’t realize it and tend to ignore what the person has done to us. And these are the people who are least valued. We simply act/feel indifferent to most of his behavior. And this is not something that is very specific to Ram or Shyam. It happens to most of us. And when I say most of us, it means I am talking of the majority. One of the best examples I can give is that of parents. Parents, especially in India, do everything for us but how many times do we stop and think seriously about them or about what they have done to us. Some people would reject my argument saying that it is their duty to do that. I’ll half-heartedly agree with them but we can always thank them in a way that would make them special and make them realize that they hold a special place in our life.

This is just one example. It may be applicable to many others, be it friends, strangers, who has had tried to give a new meaning to our life. Simple ignoring them would simply be being selfish on our part. We must try to understand that in a world comprising selfish and self-centered creatures if someone is taking pains we must thank them. And thanking them doesn’t merely mean saying thank you and some of these things can’t be taught. People just run for bigger things without even knowing that those bigger things are the ones that are the most difficult to possess. And in the process we ignore the importance attached to the smaller things which are easy to get. It is well said that we attach less value to the war which is easily won. And unfortunately that is what the human nature is all about.