Being Human.........

If you are looking for something as expected then I am sorry. It is a contemporary issue but just that it has been contemporary since civilization began.


I am talking about a very personal issue, personal to me and maybe to you too.. because it resides in the very closed corners of every human heart today. It’s about being human.
What I am referring to is the nascent idea of humanity, quite different from the present and so called progressive idea of humanity that encompasses more of charity than humanity.
Humanity for me is not the compassion one is supposed to have towards fellow beings. For me it is about living and not merely existing.
It is about the common intrinsic impulse that has been numbed today by the worldly mutings. Its about giving in to those impulses one gets of stopping on the way to see a blooming flower, of sitting idly just watching purity personified in a sleeping child, of helping a cripple cross a busy road. I am talking about the most innocent, most beautiful impulses we encounter but we push them into oblivion under the pretext of a busy existence denying ourselves those few chances to learn living as different from existing.

Undoubtedly, life is a hectic affair today and the present concept of a meaningful life has obsessed us so much so that all it allows us is a feeling of pity at the site of a hungry, tearful urchin. Maybe sometimes our conscience penetrates our thick skin deep enough to manage out a coin for him but never does this present hectic and difficult schedule allows us to wipe his tears, pick him up, say a few loving words and then offer him a nice meal. It never allows to listen what our conscience says, what our instincts indicate at. Our humanity is far too adulterated for a true instinct’s innocence.

Today at the sight of the needful we do feel pity but unfortunately that’s all we do, just feel, no actions to liberate the choked pity follows. I realized this disability, or better describe as a world spread epidemic of passiveness just a few days back.
No no I am not going to tell you one of those heartening incidents or any of the great life changing moral stories. It was just another one of those incidents where nothing happened, thanks to my passivity.
It so happened that just a few weeks back as I was on my way back after a watching a show of the latest flick, thus, in a pretty elated mood, I saw a man lying on the road divider with the upper half of his body on the road. Amazed like everybody else I turned for a second look to grasp in the unusuality of the situation, he was middle aged man in rugged clothes and was probably lying there in a drunken stupor completely unconscious.
Just then I saw an auto take a sight detour to avoid hitting him, so did the rest of the following vehicles. Everybody was taking the care of avoiding his head but no one stopped over even for a second to place his head safely back on the divider. By the time my mind was rattling with these thoughts my auto had already left the scene behind, out of my ken. But, it remained… the sight of that man lying there unaware of everything and more glaring than that the passivity of all his fellow beings around. Like all the conscious beings around I also criticized the whole human race for its indifference but then another realization shook me from within, the realization that I too was one of the fellow beings around him……Why did not I do it? I tried hard to overshadow my conscience with an excuse of “I COULD’NT” but this time I failed .Then dawned over me the passivity of my life more appropriately my existence. I have not been able to push this incident out of my mind.

I am not saying that since then my every act has been with a philanthropic intent…Infact, I have been living the life very much the same practically if you can forgive me those few moments when I have stood and stared at the blue sky or when I have held a grandpa’s hand to help him cross the road. These incidents haven’t been many in number but I have been making efforts to try and live every moment, to try and listen to the unadulterated innocent soul in me. I have faltered, I have turned a blind eye to situations where I could help and I have even now ignored the conscience sometimes but I have also succeeded many times and I am ready to keep trying all my life.

I sincerely feel that an experience like mine must have come to you too, its just that for some the realization might be awaiting, for some it may already be there and maybe for some it was there but now no more. I did not intend to teach you a lesson in humanity but this was just one experience that needed a vent and this medium could not get better because some one of you must be identifying with this realization somewhere down the line.

What I feel today can be summed up as-‘Let us live while we can still have the essential humanity alive in us.
Let us live while we still have a Zest for living.
Let us convince ourselves that living is more important than a successful existence.
Let us enlighten ourselves with the true meaning of life.
Let us LIVE.’

by Yashna Shravani
Symbiosis Law College (Pune)