HOW MUCH WE KNOW, HOW MUCH WE CARE

“No one cares how much you know

until they know how much you care.”

Theodore Roosevelt

Today, I came across these lines from Elisabeth Kubler Ross:

“The most beautiful people we have known are those who have know defeats, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.”

While this may be true, I also wonder what makes people cruel, sadists and destructive in life! I ask these questions: Didn’t Hitler suffer in his childhood? Didn’t Osama Bin Laden or Phoolan Devi go through pain and suffering? Well, we do not have to go to such extremes… Let us talk about some ordinary people in our lives…

I clearly remember a substitute teacher, who had come to our class room in grade 9. We were given books from the library to read. I had this habit of sketching anywhere and everywhere. So, he found me drawing a sketch on one of the pages of the library book I was reading. It was enough for him to drag me to the Principal’s office and for the Principal – a Jesuit priest – to compel me to call my parents the next day. I pleaded and begged… I had no past record in the school of any ‘bad behaviour’… I kept saying ‘Sorry’ and kept promising that such mistakes wouldn’t be repeated. But, neither the teacher nor the Principal showed any mercy. Maybe, they did not want to spare the rod and spoil the child. Or, maybe, they really believed, that if they didn’t shape the sapling, they wouldn’t be able to shape the tree, later. Whatever be their reason, I remember walking back home ‘scared’… I remember ‘trembling’ when I gathered enough courage to reveal this before my mom. Mom, being mom, handled it with firmness and kindness both. I wasn’t punished at home; but, I was firmly told where I was wrong.

Later, when I came to Bombay for better prospects, a relative of mine was kind enough to find a temporary (3 months) job in a general-insurance company’s office. It was a basic job involving typing of insurance policies and claim papers. Though I had passed the typing exam, back home in hometown, I had no practical experience. Moreover, I wasn’t interested in such jobs at all. Obviously, I made mistakes. My immediate boss was a heartless man on the verge of his retirement. He never bothered to help, encourage or correct me, a fresher. Instead, he would straightaway head to Manager’s cabin to complain… I hated my job even more! Well, in the same office, there was another senior staff, who would watch what was happening. I remember, how, during the lunch breaks, he would come to me and try to ease my tension. He would narrate to me stories of his own struggle and how the experience had made him a stronger and kinder person. On the last day of my work, this kind gentlemen gave me a small treat in a nearby Irani restaurant and a little memento, which I still cherish.

Back home, during my college years, a cousin of mine would live at our place to pursue his technical education. Ours was a hand-to-mouth family. But, accommodating someone from our relations for the purpose of studies or employment was a common gesture. My cousin and I grew very closer during this time. Though my parents never discriminated between their own sons and him, I, somehow, would always put myself in my cousin’s place and make him feel at home. This good karma did come around, after a few years, when I came to Bombay seeking a place for myself. My dad’s younger brother and his wife were kind enough to accommodate me in their hand-to-mouth home for nearly eight years! They never ever made me feel, that I was an ‘outsider’. Yes, my uncle himself had many stories of going through ‘lonely and painful’ experiences when, at my age, he was living with some of the relatives.

This taught me, when I was young, that while struggle and hardship made some people cruel, they, also, made some people gentle!

Mouloud Benzadi said: “You will never truly understand other people until you learn to see through their eyes, listen through their ears and feel with their hearts.” I think, the best time to learn this lesson is when we are little children, and, the best school where we can learn it from is our own home!

The question, therefore, is not how Gandhi became a Gandhi and Hitler became a Hitler, or why a young-and-promising actor like Sushant Singh and a celebrated actor like Robin Williams decide to go the way they did, or an Eckhart Tolle and a Byron Katie decide to go about the way they did…

The question, as Walt Whitman asked, is this: Whether we ask a wounded person how he feels, or we ourselves become the wounded person.”

GERALD D’CUNHA

Pic.: 1. pixabay.com 2. www.publicdomainpictures.net

Videos: 1. Honestly by Tanmay Bhat 2. The Voice UK