3 days away from the university exams, and a small window of opportunity presents itself. It’s raining outside, and the smell of the greenery surrounding the hostel embellished by the gentle kiss of rain drops is far too enticing to ignore. Hardly the most conducive environment for cramming equations into your head. The heart yearns to merely lay still, watching the heavens open up outside while soft music plays in the background. It’s one of those moments that bring to your mind how amazingly peaceful and satisfying it is to just pause your life for a minute to let your worries float away with the gentle breeze, your thoughts wandering to the world around you.
It’s hard to believe this very world that delights us in its natural beauty is at threat every single day. From potential nuclear conflicts in the near future in the war theatres of the Middle East, the Indian Subcontinent, and the Korean peninsula, to a world climate change summit at Copenhagen which may well decide the expiry period of our race on this earth. Progress seems to have brought with it equally frustrating worries to heap misery on our everyday lives! All of this, mind you, as ‘learned prophets’ look for signs of the coming apocalypse, deriving incredible meaning from the most ordinary incidents. Whether it be the Mayan calendar or the Christian Calendar, we all seem to believe that the future is beyond our control and hence, our responsibilities deemed void.
We as a race seem to have become so accustomed to news of conflict, strife, and so addicted to the thought of being eternally vulnerable to evils lurking outside our doors that we go to the lengths of believing in such absurd media-hyped tripe as “love jehad”. It seems that a monster must always lurk in the corner, even if it is of our own creation! It’s truly incredible how much we’re capable of : from feats of genius to moments of astounding stupidity, from years of preaching tolerance and ahimsa to decades of arrogance, an allergy to compromise and a penchant for war, from closing our minds to the possibility of knowing more than what our religion alone certifies suitable for us to shunning all belief in the Almighty altogether. There seems no limit, neither upper nor lower, to what the human race is capable of. But increasingly, it is the depth to which we can sink that has caused us so many nightmares as a society. The weight of being the most intelligent beings on the planet (and perhaps even the universe) seems to have taken its toll upon this race.
Sound pessimistic? The truth often does, because it is that ugly. But unlike those who merely shrug their shoulders and count the days until judgement is brought upon them, I choose to retain hope. I don’t see DOOMSDAY painted on every wall. I don’t see wars and massacres as inevitable. I believe that our issues can be resolved. I believe that Indo-Pak tension can ease, that the Middle East crisis can lead to an amicable resolution, that the rise of other superpowers including China and India can bring balance rather than further disorder to a world where the U.S. is seen as both the caring parent and the unruly dictator. I sustain this belief because I feel that we as a race are as capable of good as we are of evil. Every Hitler is followed by a Martin Luther King Jr., every Babar by an Akbar. Almost every conflict we observe today stems from decades if not centuries of hurt and suffering. Even amidst the crusades there were periods when peace reigned over Jerusalem when both Christians and Muslims were granted rights to worship in the Holy Land. Decades of dictatorship and open massacres ended in the 90s with the 1 moment of reason and sanity on the part of Mikhail Gorbachev that ended the erratic Soviet rule and gave freedom to the people chalk out their own borders. With human history itself bearing witness to our ability to see reason when pushed to the crossroads, why should it be considered foolhardy to nurture hope?
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