Comfortably Numb?

What is the one characteristic that differentiates human beings from other living organisms on this planet? `Thinking’… That’s what we are taught in schools… Thinking is what makes us different and `superior’. From electricity to the atom bomb we have millions of standing examples of this unique ability. But anyone who has `thought’ will testify that thinking is not easy. It is a constant process that throws choices at you and puts pressure on you not only to select one but also to bear the responsibility of its consequences – alone! That’s why it’s so frightening… How nice would it feel to do what one felt like without thinking! If you want to kill your neighbor because he’s noisy, just go ahead and do it… Just think how great that would be! And it is exactly that – Thinking -- that stops you from killing him… There are two very bright kids (Ayan and Aarti) who are working with Karan on his film. I like spending time with them because their minds are alive… They ask questions… They think… The other day Aarti was discussing a dilemma she was going through… It was a typical teenage problem about the stand she took when two of her friends were fighting. Nothing earth shattering but nevertheless, daunting for her. However what I found interesting was her agony trying to figure out whether she was doing the `right thing’. Interesting, because it’s precisely every such feeling and her reaction to such feelings that will eventually define her personality. And while she went through each feeling of hers in detail with me, Ayan flitted in and out of the room casually throwing in his two bits every now and then. A little later when I pointed out to him that he was a little indifferent to her problem, he shrugged his shoulders, “It’s not that I don’t care… But beyond a point it doesn’t bother me!” I know he cared but just didn’t want to get too much into it… And that’s the typical reaction to most things these days… We stop thinking the moment it becomes uncomfortable… It’s much easier to brush the discomfort away by pretending to be busy with what we have been inculcated to achieve at any cost – success! It’s conflict that makes us think… It’s making a choice that forces us into using our grey cells. But hey… Where’s the conflict today? There’s only one goal to achieve at any cost – success! And there’s only one path to follow – convenience! To add to it, most successful people today endorse the view that success justifies everything en route. Since inconvenience and discomfort have no space in the scheme of things, the first casualty in this journey is thinking… So when these futuristic movies show robots as our future, they are not entirely wrong… We are turning our children into robots who are programmed to achieve success at any cost. But who will tell them that discomfort is the only seed that can goad us into thinking… discovering… inventing? Bhattsaab had told me a story years ago and I reproduce it:
A grain of sand got embedded in the flesh of an oyster. It couldn’t bear the discomfort and tried to get rid of it for a long time… It took many years of several chemical and physiological processes for the discomfort to end… the pain had ended because the grain of sand had turned into a pearl!

I guess that’s why intelligent words are called `pearls of wisdom’ because they are arrived at, through the painful and often unbearable journey of thought!