Bliss in Ignorance... A Fool's Refuge

© Photographer: Thefinalmiracle | Agency: Dreamstime.com

John was a regular visitor to charity institutions. His life felt incomplete without talking to people in need and trying to make them feel better. He did not donate anything in cash or kind. He spent his time with children, elders or general people in distress that he came across in real life on in some institutions. In an orphanage he always used to meet Peter, a boy who was very enthusiastic in craft and art, but otherwise very depressed person. After talking to Peter time and again, John realized that Peter was always ill-treated by his caretakers as well as his limited friends around. Though, the inmates liked Peter's work, they generally avoided him when it came to real involvement as a friend.

A few months later Peter was liked by a couple who was going to adopt him. Peter was very skeptical and uncomfortable with the couple who was going to adopt him. Though the couple seemed to be financially good and understanding, there seemed to be some problem. John was somewhat optimistic that the experience in a new world might help Peter become a happy & strong person after facing new challenges and expansion of life. Sadly within some months Peter returned back to the orphanage. When questioned he told that he was living no different life than in the orphanage and infact the couple was being cruel to him. The couple on the other hand complained about Peter's depressing nature and inability to understand situations in the normal way.

John and Peter's relation was becoming stronger day by day after Peter returned to the orphanage. He related well to John and seemed to understand what John tried to explain him. Peter was 14 and since the orphanage had a limit of having kids only under age of 15, John was getting worried for him. Peter on the other hand was also getting worried about the job he would have had to do after being out of the orphanage and to be in a total alien world with no one to understand him as well as John did. John was a widower (his wife and son had died in a plane crash) but he was still passionate about his own life, lost wife and boy. He had never wished to have a liability like a child since he felt he was a free as a soul (without his soulmate). Suddenly, he started pondering over the idea of adopting Peter, which he didn't want to do only out of pity or sympathy that he was feeling now. If he had to adopt, he wanted to first love the boy like his own and then do that.

Finally after some months of self programming (training), John became convinced that he loved Peter enough that he couldn't let him face the world alone, especially with the challenge he faced about understanding simple things the way they are. He thought Peter had enough of bad luck in his life and it was time he could enjoy life and become more comfortable with it. Since Peter consulted John and followed every advice John gave, John believed that it would be easier for him to make Peter happy after adopting him. But before doing so, John clarified to Peter the priority for his own passions - his work, and his eternal love for his lost wife and son. Peter understood John's state of mind and was very grateful to John for considering to adopt him.

Some months went by, and John started realizing that Peter was changing. He was taking John, his family and friends for granted and used to behave very carelessly and erratically. Many a times Peter would blame John for ignoring him for his work or his quiet moments in the memories his lost wife and son. Apart from being depressed and moody, Peter was making normal life of John go haywire with his tantrums and demand for attention. John in turn tried to explain Peter in many ways, sometimes with the help of his friends, of how there were somethings that John couldn't give up. When not understood, John took the final step of not giving any of time for his peaceful thoughts of his lost wife and son but couldn't limit his work hours due to the pressure to take care of himself and Peter. But this also didn't help.

Some months later, Peter's closest friend from the orphanage visited him after years. John was happy that maybe this meeting would help Peter understand his situation better since Peter's friend himself was also having a serious trouble with the parents who had adopted him. John also took Peter and his friend out for a short picnic, a dinner and was happy to see Peter happy until he sat down with Peter and his friend to discuss about Peter's problem. Shockingly John realized that Peter's friend had played an influential role to increase Peter's negative thoughts about John. Peter's friend himself was always incapable about handling his own situation had brainwashed Peter and his way of thinking. Peter and his friend now blamed that John had adopted Peter so that he could have a helper in the house. The claimed that John is a self-obsessed person who was constantly involved in his own work and thoughts of past life. They made endless nonsensical allegations that shocked John, his family and friends.

John was broken after hearing all this at the risk of all sacrifices he had made. Instead of showing gratitude, Peter and his friend had abused John of selfishness, when John had sacrificed many things to make Peter happy. Things were beyond repair since John gave up all hopes because he didn't feel the need to do anything more for Peter ever again. The kind of treatment he had recieved for the greatest selfless move he had made in life left him devasted. He was sure that he could never love or trust Peter ever again. In all this mess, Peter and his friend were still amassing support for their claims by trying to convince John's friends and relatives about the lies they themselves believed in. This made John realized that Peter was not just suffering from a mental illness causing depression or mistrust about everyone around, but also a high level of stupidity which never allow his creativity or good intentions to flourish.

John finally decided that no matter what anyone believed, enough damage was done in his life. It was time to tell Peter to understand the situation well or to leave his house for good. He very well believed that Peter could never be trusted again after this deed and it was impossible to love him as a son again. John also spend a hard time in having discussions with his friends and relatives about Peter, who anyway never believed in what Peter and his friend had told them. They all had to reach to a decision of what had to be done about Peter. Surely enough a tough struggle lied ahead. After several discussions and analysis about Peter's life in the past and present, a decision was taken. John called and told Peter that if he had to live with John, he had to live under certain rules that John put up otherwise Peter had to leave home and find a house of his own. John also told Peter that he had lost all the love and concern he felt for him, and if Peter continued to stay with him, he would have to struggle a lot to revive them, with no surity about their revival. John had made a big mistake in his life, but Peter had made a bigger mistake. After growing old, instead of analysing the failure of his own relations with most of the people he came accross in life, he tried to judge himself from the fewer relations that succeeded.

The further life of John and Peter are unknown because the above story was a metaphorical representation of what we all face everyday in the role of Peter or John. Maybe sometimes we fail to appreciate those who unknowngly help us selflessly, and since we are not selfless enough we cannot actually believe such a selfless deed. On the other hand, sometimes we do help someone selflessly and end up getting kicked in the butt. Whatever the case we have to walk on, but walk on understanding and correcting the mistake we make earlier. Maybe none of us is as selfless as John or as stupid as Peter, but we must always remember to choose the people we should be kind to. We should also control our kindness depending on the response or understanding from the other person. At the same time we should always be carefully observant of what people around do for us, sometimes when we ask them for help.... and sometimes when they just help us understanding that we need it!

The Greatest Gift of All!

© Photographer: Thefinalmiracle | Agency: Dreamstime.com

A strange feeling pressures me whenever I am supposed to visit someone for a birthday / anniversary party or a similar occasion. Whenever a gifting or taking a gift on a specific occasion is involved I get very uncomfortable. Earlier I thought that recieving a gift pressures me to gift back something of the same value. Surprisingly after my financial conditions improved, I realized that its not that. Recently, since I have started getting more time for myself, I sat down, concentrated with a single objective in my mind of solving this gift issue.

This traces down back to my childhood. I have always been a person who preferred to be left alone. I seldom related to people. Though I am known to have a lot of friends or contacts, I might be with them for general fun or just being there for them, otherwise there are actually very people I consider going to when I am in trouble. Those are the people whom I feel related to. In my whole childhood till 10th standard, though acquainted and always being with many people, I actually had only 2-3 friends. Outside the house I used to be a friend of all, but back home I was specific. Rather I never invited more than those people to my place ever. And I was and am still happy with the same kind of isolation.

Things became more clearer sometime in 8th standard, when definition of friendship got more clearer and intense. There came a friend who still happens to be with me... Amit. Our friendship changed the whole world for both of us forever. It was not untill 8 years of our friendship that we realized that forget even gifting each other on birthdays, we never even have really wished each other. We didn't find that fact astonishing when we realized that. We had been together almost everyday, and since we were known as the most notorious kids in the school, we were living life to the fullest. The enjoyment of life or rather the difference between living and surviving a life dawned on me after carefully analysing this friendship of ours. But gifting was again not an issue even to be considered because whenever anyone of us knew that we wanted something, we used to manage to get it ourselves or help each other getting it. It was like his wish to have something became mine and viceversa. So the passion of having a certain thing used to become a common thing and then we used to strive for that, get that and then be happy for that. Even if I got something because of his help, or directly from him, the concept of gift never came in picture and viceversa.

Recently he got married and he was visiting the city first time since he moved out before marraige. For some reasons after picking him up at the station and while coming home I drove to a mall and gifted them both something, all the time wondering about why was I doing it. For sure there was no pressure that he had gifted me something in my marriage (since he had not) that I was trying to gift him something equally valuable in terms of money or close to heart. The thing that had changed was the pressure on me from wifey who was trying to make me more civilized instead of being the weird isolated tribal lifestyle I am used to. Thankfully this didn't affect Amit or me (After I realised why I gifted).

But gifting somewhat has become to artificial and mechanical in recent times as far as I have seen. In fact many people expect gifts from people whom they can count on, people they love or people who love them. Its become mandatory or sometimes even a style statement to gift someone. This didn't happen with me, but I have seen couples throw tantrums over the gift they did or didn't recieve on a birthday or an anniversary. The whole gifting scenario has become so dependent on an occasion that people hardly realise that there is a compulsive obsession behind the whole gifting scene. Again, here I am not denying any couples existing who do it naturally, but if I am right, they do it regardless the existence of an occassion. I am also not denying the non-couple, or non-friends gifts that are given to stay in the good books of acquaintances to reap the results.

So what was it that made my and Amit's relation different that taught me about gifting the right way or rather scaring me about the whole concept of gifting. It was about time. The time me and Amit spent with each other was always like a celebration every time. We never got bored of each other, but if we got bored of the situation we were in, we used to hunt up something interesting to do or just chill. Staying as a pair we used to roam around meeting people, talking to them again moving on. Maybe because we stayed away for a lot of time not studying and doing things that people call worthless, we were actually learning a lot about life. Those bunking of school and classes and then going for long rides on the bike used to help. Basically because we can talk and relate to the life of any person we meet. And generally in those times we used to end up talking to a chanawala or chai wala. There was no boundry for the class that we had friends in, and we were understanding and learning all aspects of life.

Looking back, now I understand that in many of the people who were either very important in the society or on the other side the least important were hardly aware of their own birthdays or anniversaries. Some people didn't even know about those dates and those who knew didn't remember till some relatives or friends threw up a bash for them. These people had been enjoying life everyday, gifting and recieving gifts like a routine and still with an appreciation that would be expressed on an occasion. They had not got tired of these gifts but infact were equally fascinated when someone gifted them something... equally enthusaistic when they wanted to gift someone. These people had been busy and enjoying more important aspect of life, using the time to the fullest, making the best out of whatever resources they had.

Coming back, after a lot of time being wasted in all these factors and when the time came that me and Amit had to think not just about living but about earning a living, things changed but it was quite an alien like situation. We did good in our respective fields but still haven't really been able to accept this culture around. Soon we got adapted to it but it has always been like a formality, and artificial move.

In todays world everyone is busy. We all have our targets whether we are doing business or doing a job. Basically we are employed by time for whatever the reasons. Its the most precious thing we have, and since we don't know how long we will live... we don't know how much time do we have. If there are problems today in the world of relations, they have mostly been due to the lack of time we spend for that relation. Though spending of time should also not become a routine, spending that time for a relation is important. A compensation is required somewhere, maybe with a short vacation. Today, I feel the biggest gift I can recieve from someone is having their time to discuss my pain or happiness when I want to share it. Similarly, I feel, it is the most important gift I can give someone. Being there when they really need me.

We surely can't get up everyday like in teen days and decide that at 7 o' clock, we all friends meet at a certain joint. It will become a routine.... and any routine is boring, it brings a boredom factor whatever we can do more interestingly. Since we all have our priorities if not always ambitions and goals, meeting at the right time with ample time would be the greatest gift of all! The gift of time helps you understand yourself, life, your loved ones and most importantly the importance of time. Obviously too much of anything is bad, so one has to be careful that even time is gifted and the right time and in right amount. :)


© Photographer: Thefinalmiracle | Agency: Dreamstime.com