I have a Dream | Teen Ink

I have a Dream

March 9, 2009
By Siddharth BRONZE, Kolkata, Other
Siddharth BRONZE, Kolkata, Other
1 article 0 photos 0 comments

When you mess up the grammar of life and feel you don't have time enough to solve your indecision, you take recourse to what your spiritual forefathers said and give up all that you toiled day in and day out for, all that your parents dreamt you to be, all that a man's greed for power got him, just to seek solitude in isolation.

The search for God and the search for Happiness(I quote Happiness with a capital 'H' to highlight the fact that it has no less an aura than God)has taken mankind to a different degree of life. A life where he is driven by a constant quest to search for the missing ingredient of a Happy life and to sprinkle upon himself that dust of myth which makes him the Happiest person. It is neither a surprise nor a shock to see so many people all across the globe living a life of renunciation. What made them decide to leave the so called materialistic bonds of family/service life and search for that unknown truth? Was it an instantaneous decision? Or what is something man's ever curious and gallant mind sought after for ages? They were all educated men. Studied at world class universities. Grew up in loving families. They all knew that the existence of God is a myth still left unexplored. They are all empiricists by birth. Why did they try to hunt down a fact which scientific research over ages never could conclude satisfactorily? They don't invest in a bear market(returns are unsure). They don't go against their boss' orders to seek a fast promotion(might lose the job)? So humans don't go for things that are uncertain. But then what creates exceptions? What makes men invest in a bear market? What makes them defy their boss's orders and take critical decisions themselves? Is it their urge to defy to rules? Is it their nature to not accept facts? Or is it their desire to venture into the unsure, the doubtful.

So why is it that people are ready to gamble with something as delicate, as serene and as gifted as life? Is it justified that on failing to derive Happiness in the life one has, he surrenders himself to that sought after truth, that sought after desire to be Happy? I think not. What most people confuse with the arcane elements of truth, God, Happiness etc is simply the ingredient that went missing in his perpetual quest for power. His social life was incomplete. His family life was like a burden. His professional life was hampered. And that problem lay in man's roots. It was his non-belief of the fact that it is in this troubled, toiling, uneventful world that man's ultimate quest for Happiness, truth, God lay; there is no alternate destination; there is no other place as beautiful and as passionate as this. It is this unattended vacuum that left his mind fallible to such alternative thoughts. One has to belief the fact that within the walls of family, society and profession lay the myths of Happiness, truth and God; that they all live in unison.

I detest such minds who like to distract people from these worldly bounds.
It is a sin to influence people by conjectures, especially when its derived decisions may have effects on many associated with them. Those seekers of Happiness/God who claim to aim at charlatanism are the ones who have never found the pleasures of renunciated life and therefore invite most others to help them start their quest afresh. Everything that's not palatable to normal life, everything that irks the mind, creates a vacuum in our way of thinking and this makes our normality of life more pernicious to teaching of such failed people.

My dream is this that all human beings across the world should believe that the beauty of life lies in the elements of family, work and discipline. Man must not be insolent enough to take life as granted. To renunciate all of this and isolate oneself into a religious destination to find God, or an isolated place to search for that truth and Happiness, is nothing more than giving up on ones hope, self belief and self confidence to solve the unseen and misunderstood problems in our day to day life. I dream that the monks and sages who have cut all ties with worldly affairs, will come back one day or the other and warn every other man, that there is no place as beautiful and cherishable as the land of struggle, that there is no life as serene and fulfilling as a life with their loved ones and that there is no Truth/Happiness/God more acceptable than fulfilling the duties of service, service towards mankind and service towards oneself, such that it becomes an edict for most seekers of solitude.

My dream does not ask people to blemish their personal belief in God or that unique element of Happiness, it simply asks them to believe the fact that all these sought after prizes lie within our bounded walks of life, a life of duty, and a life of responsibility.

This dream I assure you is more thoughtful than it sounds, for I have enough patience to think, but not enough to pen them down. Regardless, I wish someone writes it down in a fashion better than me, in a fashion that will win him or her, an encore in a public forum.


'May luck run out on man before he thinks that work is but its inferior counterpart'








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The author's comments:
Tis essay baged the 3rd prize at the "I Have a Dream" essay competition organised by the Ameican Centre,Kolkata, India, to mark te 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr's visit to my country

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