Be SELFISH to Conquer the “RAVANA”

Dussehra is one of the most important Hindu festivals. Ever since my childhood I learnt that it symbolizes victory of good over evil and triumph of truth over deceit.

I am neither a religious person nor my concept of God matches with any mythological character. However, the childhood stories narrated to me from our epics indeed carry a great moral value. These stories relate to a different era when sons left their palatial comforts and heartily accepted a hard life for years to keep the word of their father, today hotels have to give discounts so that sons are encouraged to take their parents and grand parents for comfortable outing once in a while.

Everywhere one turns, from wars, death and killing, to exploitation and greed, to corruption and misuse of power, in all the negatives we can find our folly at work. Good and evil have always existed but what has truly changed is the perception of human towards self. In those stories of our epics people took the responsibilities of their mistakes and punished their own self but now it is enough for us to point fingers at others. Putting the blame and finding the mistakes culminates our war over these demons. We are too consumed by reactions that we forget to act. Many of us  don’t even react because somewhere they feel they are part and parcel of Ravan sena.

Was Ram a sacrificer ? No, He was not. He is called “maryada pushotam” because “maryada”(the ambit) refers more to self esteem than it does to sacrifice.  On his principles for life, honoring word of his father meant more than worldly comforts. This is high time that we begin to learn the true meaning of self and selfish. Let us be selfish, let us try our bit to eliminate the miseries of world because they bother us and not because to do so is in accordance with established code of altruism. A person who does service to humanity to gain applause or acceptance can never be called noble. Let us do it because in the night when we close our eyes to ponder over our day we see some acts that justify our reason for existence. Society may gain from our act but our motive should always be our own satisfaction.

These things were projected by Ayn Rand in many of her books but somehow her characters were too haughty to be humble, understanding and compassionate, so in their pursuit of excellence they looked down on fellow men. I honestly feel objectivism combined with spiritualism is a beautiful way of life. Objectivism raises our self esteem and teaches us to prepare our self to do everything for our need not under some pseudo tag of service to mankind or altruism while spiritualism teaches to look within and not to point fingers and denounce.

Let us recognize that every good and bad thing starts with self .Let us not blame, let us do our bit whether or not we get the credit for it let us do it because we are selfish , let our acts be governed by inner motivation. Only better individuals and better citizen can pull us out of despair or we will continue to celebrate symbolic Dussehra amidst the sorrowful shape of mankind in an age of great prosperity and knowledge equally along side sorrow and despair.