In any situation only do
what you believe in and what you are comfortable doing.
Yesterday, I met
my dear friend RU. We coincidentally ended up at the same coffee shop. We spent
a few minutes like most good friends do – catching up and sharing notes. In a
context that both of us have had to connect in the recent past, RU and I
started talking about right and wrong. RU brought up an almost Osho-like
perspective – one that I love, believe in, and live by – on right vs wrong. RU
said, “Right and wrong are so relative. To someone something may appear right
and to someone else the same thing may appear wrong. So, society sees it in a
certain way. And the law sees it in a certain other way. In a legal context,
you can’t debate much; you just follow the law. But in a social context, you
don’t always need to keep debating right and wrong. You just do what you have
to do. And do what you are comfortable doing.”
Interestingly, Raghuram Rajan, the Reserve
Bank Governor too shared a similar perspective, more in the context of economic
policy when he announced a 50 bps rate cut earlier this week. He said, with the
air of someone who was not just a subject matter expert, but also a thought
leader, these famous words: “Everybody and his uncle
has a theory on how to run the economy and what the RBI should be doing. There
are savants and idiot savants available to give you advice. So we hear a lot of
advice. There are people who say interest rates should be zero. There are
people who say cut your lending rates and raise deposit rates…I don’t know what
you want to call me. Santa Claus is what Latha (Latha Venkatesh is an anchor
with CNBC-TV18) called me earlier, you want to call me a hawk; I don’t know, I
don’t go by these things. My name is Raghuram Rajan and I do what I do.”
There’s great value in the discussion that
RU and Rajan bring to the table.
The whole world obsesses over what is right
and what is wrong. If we get caught in splitting hair on this debate,
seriously, no one will ever win. Because what is right to one may really appear
wrong to another. And it is only because it appears so that people have
differences of opinions and disagreements. It is this divergence in thought
that leads to quarrels, fights, messy legal battles and often times a lifetime
of acrimony. And it is this same right vs wrong argument that spawns crime,
hatred and intolerance.
I have learnt from Life that the best way
to live is to only do what you believe in – no matter what. If you don’t
believe in something but have to do it to please other people – often, family,
friends, bosses or colleagues – you will be very unhappy with the entire experience.
Now, when the experience is as trivial as attending a family dinner with folks
that you have poor chemistry with, you can get over it once the meal is over or,
at best, you will put it behind in you a couple of days. But what do you do
when you have to keep toeing the line in a work situation with an autocratic
boss in an anarchic system? What do you do when you have to sell your soul in a
relationship where you are treated like a doormat? Well obviously, being the
nice person that you are, you begin by adjusting, accommodating and working
towards making the other party see reason. But when you end up having to suffer
day in and day out, at some time, you will conclude that you can’t handle it
anymore. You will then do what you must do – like walk out of a relationship or
quit a job or refuse dinners with family members that you can’t relate to. When
you do take a stance, in your own interest, people will make it appear as if
you have sinned. They will say you must “grow up”. And this whole debate on
what is right and what is wrong will erupt – and rage on.
In
any situation, four perspectives will be thrown at you. What is right, what
appears to be right, what appears to be wrong and what is wrong. All four are
relative. Simplify your Life. Rather than suffer yourself while pleasing other
people, do only what you believe in, and what you are comfortable doing. This
is the only way to inner peace. When you are at peace with yourself, magically,
your world, and everything in it, falls in place!
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