How often we live our lives out of convinience and not convictions...
More often than not, convinience takes over convictions. Living out of convictions is not always easy...most of the times it is very inconvinient.
Mostly, I do not litter around. I do not carelessly throw garbage around. I do pause and look for a dustbin or a heap of garbage to add to it, instead of dirtying an otherwise clean surrounding. But what do I do when there is no garbage heap or a dusbin, or any such other place in sight? and to add to it if it is inconvinient to carry the garbage aroun with me?..I mostly throw it in a corner or toss it in a drain. Somtimes I do put it in my bag, to throw it later at a more appropriate place..if it is something I can carry around in my bag. But if it is more than a little inconvinient, I do what my conviction otherwise does not allow me to do. ....Then is it really a conviction? I am not really living by it.
This was a very small, mundane example....but the same phenomena can be projected on to bigger and more consequential things in life...
Sometimes I hear myself saying - Ya Ya I know...but then....just this time...this is an exceptional case....the situation is different.....right now there is more at stake....I need to take care of something more important....and several other such pretentious ways to justify whatever it is that I know is not done....
We dont want to look bad to ourselves...so we pretned even to ourselves, and fool our selves...but then..whom are we really fooling?
What does it take to live a live truly out of ones convictions? I dont know..a lot of inner strength maybe.....
Just a thought..what happens when two convictions are contradictory to each other..what does one do then.?..
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2 comments:
I would do that as well. At least the 'intent' is to throw the garbage in a bin. Well, you can look for a bin for sometime but you cannot wait for an hour or carry that garbage along with you all the time.
Its good to see that western countries have a bin visible in a 30 sec walking distance in most public place. So it's easy to throw the stuff in the bin. In India, if municipality will put bins everywhere, they will need to find space and then also deal with theft of bins. There are instances of cables being stolen, public tabs being stolen and even halogens and tube lights hanging in public places.
You cannot ignore those facts. It's best to say no to plastics when you can manage without them but take it when you don't have a choice. Maybe keep a cloth bag always in you car or bike/scooter to carry any grocery.
The convition is to make things better over time but not to be obsessed and being egoistic about it. Create awareness in your own sphere of influence and make a little difference if you cannot take a full time social job. Encourage your company to reuse it could like stationary. Encourage the folks in the society you live in to take at least one small initiative for cleanliness. It could be planting a tree, buying a bin for public place, non-use of paper towels in toilets, and minimize use of plastics.
I agree with you Ashish. However, I think I did not explain my dilemma very clearly here... when I gave the example of "littering" ..I was only trying to give a mundane example of how very often convenience wins over convictions.I chose the example because its very simple..overly simple I guess. I really wanted to talk about the more complex situations in life...in matters of bigger consequences.
There are so many things that we do in our lives which are merely convenient..and knowing that it is probably not the right thing to do. we find ways to justify it because it is convenient. Example - Telling a lie. I agree that in some situations it also maybe the right thing to. But in many and most others, it is merely convenient. Telling the truth may require a little more doing on our part. I am talking about situations where we shy away from speaking up against something wrong because who wants to take "panga ya sirdard". We prefer to take the back seat in the dark corner and munch on the pop corn and watch the drama. We all are great preachers of good parenting. We can lecture for hours.But do we generally practice what we know is right? And so many other things...
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