You argue. You don’t agree. You remain unchanged and so is your friend. Yet it doesn’t trouble your relationship. It is one of finest qualities of friendship. Here is one of the arguments I had with my friend. I took a photo of a very poor old man on my commute and was showing it to my friend during our coffee break. “Why don’t these people die rather than living like this?” - I commented. He smiled and told me this:
We are not machines. Despite the struggles, life is so precious. It doesn’t really matter whether one is rich or poor or sick or healthy. There are no problems and solutions in life’s purest form. It is just how we see it. So, it is wrong in saying “living like this”. Life’s magics are so tempting to one to believe in God. Anyway, I don’t say it is God’s plan. If it is God’s plan then everything is and including all the cruel things. In deed, I accept that I can’t comprehend on how this God thing works. So instead of thinking it from God’s point, I would rather recommend you to see from our side. It is simple - helping someone gives us joy and peace. The ultimate help is letting one to live at least a second more. Don’t ask me how or why. There are things that we can accept as it is. Well, I would suggest, instead of asking “why don’t these people die rather than living like this?”, you can ask yourself “how can I help these people to live till their end?”. Who knows, after 10 years he would become a heart donor to a kid. That kid could become a person who could save millions of lives. How well things of this universe are connected is beyond our imagination.
Well, my coffee cup was half empty. What he told me was too complex or totally irrelevant that I didn’t get anything. I didn’t feel like arguing in this line any further. I jumped to the other side - about the people who help. I spoke about how all the organisations which start with good intention to help these people but end up in being money minded. I argued that the young people visit these abandoned people just for their entertainment, yet another timepass activity. I pointed out that the rich people who pay in thousands for a fancy dinner would give only in tens to the poor. For this, he argued:
We are all not saints and we don’t have to be. It is not that you should drop everything so that you make the other person equal to you. There will be a difference. It will exist forever. We are not solving that. Between what you CAN do and you are WILLING to do, I am fine with the WILLING side. It is true that there are organisations and people like the one you mentioned. But that is a different problem. You don’t have to worry much about it as you see so many problems everyday and many worser than this. We are stupid enough to not to recognise many problems as problems. That is okay.
We continued our argument for a while without missing the aroma of the strong hot coffee. After all, these poor old people didn’t matter to us. It was just the topic for that day - a timepass. We had no point that we agreed. In fact, it was one of the useless conversations we had. Just while leaving, he told me: By the way, just take one tiny step and you will soon discover that you are making an infinitely huge difference in someone’s life. That was a ridiculous one, I thought.
We are not machines. Despite the struggles, life is so precious. It doesn’t really matter whether one is rich or poor or sick or healthy. There are no problems and solutions in life’s purest form. It is just how we see it. So, it is wrong in saying “living like this”. Life’s magics are so tempting to one to believe in God. Anyway, I don’t say it is God’s plan. If it is God’s plan then everything is and including all the cruel things. In deed, I accept that I can’t comprehend on how this God thing works. So instead of thinking it from God’s point, I would rather recommend you to see from our side. It is simple - helping someone gives us joy and peace. The ultimate help is letting one to live at least a second more. Don’t ask me how or why. There are things that we can accept as it is. Well, I would suggest, instead of asking “why don’t these people die rather than living like this?”, you can ask yourself “how can I help these people to live till their end?”. Who knows, after 10 years he would become a heart donor to a kid. That kid could become a person who could save millions of lives. How well things of this universe are connected is beyond our imagination.
Well, my coffee cup was half empty. What he told me was too complex or totally irrelevant that I didn’t get anything. I didn’t feel like arguing in this line any further. I jumped to the other side - about the people who help. I spoke about how all the organisations which start with good intention to help these people but end up in being money minded. I argued that the young people visit these abandoned people just for their entertainment, yet another timepass activity. I pointed out that the rich people who pay in thousands for a fancy dinner would give only in tens to the poor. For this, he argued:
We are all not saints and we don’t have to be. It is not that you should drop everything so that you make the other person equal to you. There will be a difference. It will exist forever. We are not solving that. Between what you CAN do and you are WILLING to do, I am fine with the WILLING side. It is true that there are organisations and people like the one you mentioned. But that is a different problem. You don’t have to worry much about it as you see so many problems everyday and many worser than this. We are stupid enough to not to recognise many problems as problems. That is okay.
We continued our argument for a while without missing the aroma of the strong hot coffee. After all, these poor old people didn’t matter to us. It was just the topic for that day - a timepass. We had no point that we agreed. In fact, it was one of the useless conversations we had. Just while leaving, he told me: By the way, just take one tiny step and you will soon discover that you are making an infinitely huge difference in someone’s life. That was a ridiculous one, I thought.
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