Object and Suffer?

Recently I had a discussion with one of my friends about bringing about change in and around us. He is of the opinion that we should accept things as they are whether at our workplace or in the society around us and not get bothered if something is not the way it should be or if something can be improved. According to him, if a person tries to change anything, he or she is bound to be castigated. Most of us tend to get into a "comfort zone" where we are very happy with the way things are and very strongly resist any change that will force us out of that comfort zone. This is applicable to every environment, whether it is the workplace or home or any other environment that you can think of.

My mother sometimes used to remind me of the famous saying - "Santoshi nar sada sukhi!", which translates into English as "Be contented with what you have got!". I am one of those who refuses to subscribe to this idea and would rather be propagating the idea - "Never be contented with what you have got!". One can be grateful for that which he has already got, but one should never be contented with it. the day you reach a stage where you are contented with what you have got, you will cease to grow and achieve anything further. I firmly believe that if all human beings had followed this idea of being contented with what we have got, we would never have discovered and invented any of the things that we take as granted now in our daily life. Take , for example, the clothes we wear. If our ancestors were happy roaming on this planet of ours in their "natural" states, they would never have thought of covering themselves up with leaves,then with animal skins and eventually invent clothing as we see and use today (that would have saved some of us the trouble of having to go to topless or nude beaches to appreciate the assets of other members of the human race there!). If you look at human history, every time someone has proposed an idea which is radically different from the then existing notions about which the idea has been proposed, the proposer of the idea has almost always been castigated. In modern times, this seems to be happening less often than in the past, but it does happen. There is always a great resistance to change. I am reminded of two gentlemen here - Copernicus and Galileo. Copernicus was the first to propose the Heliocentric theory ( which stated that the earth and other planets revolve around the Sun) which enraged a lot of people. Till the time Copernicus suggested that the Sun was at the centre of the solar system, it was believed that the Earth was at the centre and that other planets revolved around it.Even the Church, which regulated such beliefs and astronomical theories, denounced Copernicus' theory and warned people not to support it. When Galileo openly began supporting the heliocentric theory of Copernicus, he was castigated and put under house arrest for the rest of his life. Today, we all know that the duo were correct but in their own times there was a great resistance to the ideas that they proposed and supported.

I have often come across situations where I have realized that people (those in authority) don't really want leaders to work with them. They are more comfortable with followers who will abide by the instructions given to them and not ask questions about the instructions. I firmly believe that an organization which has too many of such people in authority is doomed to fail at some point in time, sooner rather than later. Power, they say, corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. When you have people in authority who are not open to questions, it is obvious that they will not be able to improve on whatever they are doing and this, in turn, is going to lead to the downfall of the organization. I have had the privilege of working as a faculty member in the early part of my career and I firmly believe that during my teaching days, I learnt more from the questions that some of my students asked me rather than from the books that I read.

I would like to share a beautiful poem/prayer, written by one of the most famous sons of our country - Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore, today with all of you. Do spare a minute to think about what this poem/prayer is all about.


Let me ...

Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers,
but be fearless in facing them.
Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain,
but for the heart to conquer it.
Let me not look for allies in life's battlefield,
but to my own strength.
Let me not crave in anxious fear to be saved,
but hope for the patience to win my freedom.

Grant me that I may not be a coward,
feeling your mercy in my success alone;
But let me find the grasp of your hand,
in my failure.

- Rabindranath Tagore