PERCEPTION

There are times when u feel totally helpless in life.. these moments seem to be too frequent now a days. Is it an actual helplessness or just what we feel? Do we over-perceive our helplessness to an extent where it actually overtakes our thoughts and makes us weak?

There are times when I see someone in need – a street urchin, a crippled beggar.. I want to do something to help them. But what? My immediate thoughts go towards reasoning what they might do with the money that I intend to give them. The child would anyway not get anything – some kingpin over them would snatch it all away. The old beggar would only use the money I give to buy to buy booze, bidi, charas…. Why waste my hard earned money? But, what’s in a rupee or two? I don’t know if what I decide just shows that I am a heartless pig, a miserly scrooge or someone who holds principles above every day emotions???

There are times when I love a special someone so much that all I want to do is tell it to them. Confess and then say “Que sera sera”. But what do we do? We overrationalise the decision. We factor in everything. Feelings of others, our social status, what the rest of the bloody damned world thinks of us…

Do we now a days think too much? Think about possible consequences (we think only of the bad ones – not a single good consequence of our actions cross our minds), we think about the effect of our actions on the rest of the world (rest of the world, mind u, not just the few we care about or about whom we care, we think about the whole world – all those people whom we have never given a second thought in the normal course of activities – all of them somehow miraculously play a pivotal role in our decisions). We think so hard and we decide that though a particular action may make us happy, maybe good for us in some way, we should under no circumstance go through with the same – we convince ourselves with some half baked reason…

Have we stopped living today because our actions today may (in our perception) be detrimental to someone somewhere in the near or distant future? Whom are we living for? Is this life ours or something that we owe to the rest of the world? Did God put us on the earth and tell us “ go my child, suffer till u can suffer no more for that is your only purpose in life”. We take pains, we cry and all that for what, for whom – normally for people who don’t care a rats ass if we live or die… that’s whom for.

Is considering our own happiness once in a while, wanting to feel satisfied – even if rarely, wanting to and being able to break into an innocent smile just once in a blue moon, wanting to spend some time with someone dear and feel perfectly ecstatic about it, wanting to fall in love and wanting to keep that love, wanting to live…just live and not merely exist - is it a mortal sin?