Responsible Lives

Yesterday I was speaking, rather chatting, with one of my friends from college. It always makes me feel good when I connect to people who ‘were’ in my life and I strive to keep them alive :) every now and then. The initial Hellos, Whatcha been doing and Hows life, led to more conversant, interesting and somewhat serious topics. The prevailing insecure life in our country (Right! Tell me something I don’t know!), how unsafe our lives are, how terribly frightened we are and should be! How selfish and money minded the politicos are (is there anyone who doesn’t already know that?), how things will never improve, how everyone will die a sad and sorry death someday. You really think we are all going to be dancing in glee when the D-day (death day) comes. Man! With all this prevailing insecurity and unhappiness, don’t you wish we would?

And like I do most of the times, I tried to get to the bottom of why he was being so pessimistic. I mean, ‘I’ am pessimistic, so I know how that works! Whenever something is important to me I try to expect the worse that can happen, and then some more. That keeps me busy while the thing turns out to be quite alright, which on the other hand, had I given it its due importance, would have turned out to be a complete mess. Now, I know that reverse psychology is not everyone’s cup of tea. But it's pretty amazing when you want to get something done that you thought was nearly impossible.

So why and what am I blabbering? I am not for or against the politicos, the environment, the people who want to save dams or the forests or melting glaciers, the people who want to put a bullet through your head for seemingly no reason, the builder who wants you to vacate so that he can build a 20 storey building, the boss who never said a kind word to you, or the one who showers you unwanted attention all the time. I read somewhere – “If you care, you just get disappointed all the time. If you don't care nothing matters so you are never upset.” A part of me would say… "Whoa!!! That about sums it all up!" Another part of me says – "How can you not care about something in life, are you not human?" Well, with all the seemingly wonderful things happening in the world, let alone the country, you might want to rethink that.

As I was chatting with my friend, I realized that it is not about the blame game anymore. It is about the incapacity of people to realize that things are not the same anymore. If we know that politicians are not going to get the job done, why do ‘we’ put them up there? If we know that the secure lives that we are dreaming about, is not all that secure after all, what are ‘we’ doing about it? We want everyone else to take responsibility about what has happened/will happen. When will we take responsibility of our lives? Why is it that we fall into this trap all the time? Are we hoping that our fall each time will be different, better than the earlier one? There was a time when we could care less; we still do. But the fact remains that even that is not making a difference. So the real question is – what will?