Jesus Complex?

Sometimes you wonder. Is it just you, or is everybody going a little mad? Are people increasingly indulging in self-defeating activities which will, in a matter of time, blow up right in their faces?

Why do they open themselves up to vulnerability? Is their desire to express themselves so important that it has to be imprinted digitally to the end of times. Why is there a pressing need to be with them or against the rest? Is there no middle ground? Why do they think it is a test of love to exhibit bedroom antics to the full view of the public? And still call it expression, even when others call it exhibitionism.

You know there is no wrong or right answer? Truth is a multifaceted son of a gun with the last laugh when it finally comes to the fore. Your time is getting near, and you want to ride in the sunset, hurting fewer and fewer people every day. You want to thank your lucky stars for the times in your life, which you had in your own right, which had been unpredictable, but in the end, you hope you really had the time of your life.

You want to reduce your sins, collect brownie points, and make the remaining times on Earth less controversial. You tell yourself to let bygones be bygones. Lest, you need not forgive nor forget, but let it be.

But hell no! People do not want to let it be. They want to have the final say. They find joy in holding tightly to the rein. They find joy in saying, ‘I was right; you were wrong!’. If I, an able body, can think this way, why not a more confident people who exude piety through all their orifices can indeed assess the whole imbroglio in such a manner?

You give up. In times like these, you develop a Jesus Christ complex and engage in a solitary soliloquy with yourself. Forgive them, God, for they know not what they do.

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No Brain, No Pain.

There was a time when I developed a compulsion of wanting to know everything about Bhagavadgita. I was told that the holy book had all the recipe for a meaningful life. And I heard about a volunteer at a local temple who was conducting a series of lectures on that subject. My acquaintances were all praises about the speaker and the contents of his classes.  

I was drawn in. I decided to give it a try. In the first lecture, all that I heard was that I was nothing. I was smaller than the smallest of the speck in the Universe. I did not matter to the greater scheme of things. Hence, the last thing I needed was my ego. I had to crack my hardshell called ego, following which enlightenment would flow in like an eternal fountain of knowledge. Like how Arjuna had to clear his head of all his doubts to receive the unlimited erudition from the Lord himself.

I thought to myself, "I do not need these people to tell me that I am nothing; my wife tells me all the time that my ego is bigger than my head! These people are asking me to be a zombie - to operate like a non-functional lump of protoplasm working in a reflex arc at the spinal level. I did not like to be another statistic along the line of a cult member of the Branch Davidian who perished in the Waco massacre smiling in anticipation of the bliss of entropy.

The little bit of sense that prevailed within me told me that these just will not do. Echoes of my mother's childhood stories of Socrates in his death bed murmured somewhere in the nook of my mind. Even though she barely scraped through primary schooling at a time when discrimination against girls was rife, she managed to sponge whatever she could from radio dramas, movies, storybooks and periodicals. Her words reverberated, "don't listen just because this fellow or that fellow said so; enquire and investigate and be enlightened!" or something to that effect.

Hence, I recoiled to the company of me, myself and I to indulge in a little soul searching and introspection. 

Ego, a sense of self-importance and self-esteem, cannot be all so bad. It is the trait to make one so embarrassed to hold out his hand for alms as his pride tells him that he can fend for himself in this big wide world. It prods that if a lame or a blind can survive, why can't he? 

It is the thing that pushes him to be better than his neighbour. It is that satisfying, gloated feeling that propels him to go beyond boundaries that no man has ever been before. Many individuals are addicted to immersion in the sea of endorphins as they become successful in their outlandish endeavours. Some fail, but that also inspires them to try harder to succeed. Well, that is how the human race progresses. It is the hard work of mad minds of the insane with a never say die attitude, not the complacent bumpkin who thinks very lowly of himself and no self-pride but just follows the herd. Beware, the shepherd, despite all the seemingly cordial and charming smiles, has only one thing on his mind - to fatten the flock and to prepare for the slaughter! He has a vested interest. For vegetarians, there is the proverbial cash cow to milk. 

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Nothing compares to you?

No, you are nobody. Not a special Being sent to existence on a mission. There is no purpose for your being. Your life does not matter to the equilibrium of the Universe. Your flutter is not going to send shockwaves anywhere. Not even a ripple.  You are propelled to Earth by mere chance; the right protein unwasted, utilised meaningfully at the right place at the correct time. Conversely, you could have been just a flushed down debris amongst the many putrefying wasteful effluents of humanity.

You are not chosen. Neither are those around you. Neither of you is selected for each other either. The bond that you build along the way is just brittle as the next heart that you break in your next tour of duty called life. Everyone is for himself when it matters most. The filial piety that you give or expect is just societal arrangements to ensure that the unproductive segment of the crowd is responsibly assigned to someone. The cloud of guilt hovers over its shirkers. This kind of arrangement had worked fine all this while, why change now? The young expected their elders, who still continue the original sin of their fathers, to provide for them not matter what. It seems to be their birthright. Anyway, the offsprings never chose to be born or had the choice of choosing their parents.

There is no personified guiding force to act as a guardian angel. There is no one tallying your merit and demerit points. No one is there to open your book to assign the tenure in heaven or hell. The fear of rebirth and suffering again is to ensure community functions, not punishment. When you fade away, you just do that; from memory and physical presence. If you are lucky, you will leave a legacy, which would only be appreciated when you are gone. The legacy, mind you, is inversely proportional to the number of years spent on Earth. As they say, only the good die young meaning the living are evil!

There are no wrong constellations that determine your actions and outcomes. Or the work of ogles or Satan to blame. It is all the actual effect of your doing. Do not blame planet Saturn to screw up seven years of life. No, it does occupy your house or cast a shadow on your shining stars. It is all in your mind and your action.

No, the divine forces cannot be cajoled to alter the course of the Universe just to suit your convenience. Nature does not give a damn about your well-being. It is a proud self-fulfilling force which does it works in tandem to maintain the yin and the yang.

It all takes a catastrophe for humankind to be jolt into self-realisation. At the heights of the insurgency, the primal desire to survive would dominate. Choosing between self and loved ones, it is only in romantic novels that love conquers all. In reality, it is self beyond charity.