Good, Bad or Human?

Well, this could be called a post after ages, considering that most of previous posts have just been ‘news reports’. I have been wanting to make a post since long, but I probably lost it. I really am unable to write anything that I find worth posting [It does raise questions about the existence of this blog. I'm writing this, to answer that question to myself.]

This post is provoked by an act of sharing, an act of kindness, an act of goodness, that surprised me. This post isn’t about the act itself, but it’s about me being surprised. Why on earth should I (or anybody) be surprised, when someone is just being human? Aren’t human beings meant to be and feel human?

I wonder why people say, “this is a bad, bad world.” I find a lot of goodness and humanness around me. Unless I strain my memory really hard, I can only recall people who try to be as good and nice as they can be; People trying to be as human as possible. Either there’s something utterly wrong with my judgment of people or there’s something wrong with the general feeling that the world is a bad, bad place.

There’s one other possibility that just strikes me – I am so nice to people that, everyone else tries to be nice with me. I don’t think I am such a big deviation from the average. I’m just another goat, in the great herd.

And another one, I’m in a really special place, presently. I have been only to the special places. I have visited only the places that are at an extreme, far away from the ‘average’ place in the world. But, given I’m just another goat in the great herd, this is very unlikely. I am probably grazing at a random spot on the great grasslands.

Since these are ruled out, it boils down to either a wrong judgment or a wrong general feeling.

Coming to my judgment, I wouldn’t call myself an Oracle or the wise one, but I’m no dumb ass either. Well, taking the statistical route, the number of times I’ve had any real “nasty” surprises in dealing with people has been much lesser than the number of times things turned out nearly as expected. My judgment could, therefore, possibly given some credibility.

So, that leaves me with just one possibility. The idea that the world is a bad, bad place is not entirely true, if not completely absurd and outright wrong. The world is really a nice place, with “human” beings inhabiting it. The nasty surprises that you get, really are the surprises and not the general rule.

Filed under: Ramblings , bad, good, human, life, world

To do or not to do

Achieve something, I’m often reminded,
achieve something, something that’s worthwhile.
Don’t just kill time, they say,
for, brutally, it shall kill you someday.

Make the best use of time, I tell myself,
for I realize, how I spend my days
is how I’m spending my life and
I’m going to get just one of it!

But, what is worthwhile, I wonder
everything seems so good one moment
and all meaning vanishes the very next.
I’m utterly confused, somebody help!

Pick one from, spoke my brother,
the ‘everything’ that seems good
and do it right, just, do it right!
Life, as you live through it, shall
teach you to do things that are right
and at the end of it all, you’ll
never regret what you’ve done
but, only what you couldn’t!

—-

Inspired by
1) a late-night conversation with a friend
2) Annie Dillard, “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives”

Filed under: Ramblings , inspiration, life, poem