I have noticed people lying at both ends of the spectrum. At one end, you find people who are completely humble. There is not one bit of snobby tendency in them and they are in almost perfect control of themselves. At the other end of the spectrum are humans who have reactions quite similar to animals. They will shout, fight, scream and burst out just like animals would give natural responses to certain stimuli. As I saw people distributed across the spectrum, I have always asked as to what could help people to acquire the other former extreme. Why would one want to reach that extreme? Well, is it not what separates us from animals? The power of asking “Why?” before taking every step! The power of being able to sort out our thoughts instead of letting them dictate our actions without our involvement!
Coincidentally it so happened that I came across some eminent academicians who indeed fit the bill. I did a generalization and thought that academicians, after years of disciplined study of their subjects in the greatest depth would have eventually trained their minds to be more peaceful and more in-control. The typical picture of an academician to me had become that of a man who pursues knowledge like performing a sacred duty. He believes in the acquisition and spread of knowledge. He disconnects himself from the common complaints of life. But we all know that spending five minutes with people is different from spending five fours or more with them. It is always easy to project the best of yourself for five minutes to a person but it is difficult or nearly impossible to project the best of yourself for more time.
I have now spent a significant amount of time among academicians and as an academician myself. I turn back and laugh at how naïve and innocent was my generalization of academicians. I realized that spectrum was more or less the same here. There were people on both extremes of the spectrum. The animalistic tendency of doing things not thought-out completely and purely out of some inner uncontrollable thought process was evident here as well. The tendency to blurt out and lose control was present here too. In fact, I felt that sometimes it was more pronounced here. After all, these people have locked themselves away from the world and taken great mental stress to reach the position that they are in today, why not? Why would not the stress cause them to become irritable?
The acquisition of knowledge was for me a ways or means of realizing the insignificance of the human race in the face of the marvels of nature. And indeed you could find people quieted by their life’s journeys. But you find such people very little in number. There are people who have grown proud of their achievements and their intellectual superiority. There are people who do not consider their own ignorance when trying to establish what they know to the others. They walk with fear that they should not be proved inferior. They go out of control and they become wild like animals. The problems that they face are similar. They have frustrations, obligations, emotions and they are in-control and out-of-control as anybody else.
Long years of hard work and studying the most difficult of subjects can give you the necessary intelligence to perhaps do something more intellectual than the layman. But of what use is the honing of the intellect when it does not help us understand what drives us? Of what use is this vast collection of facts and skills in our heads when they do not help us even control the relatively easy-to-control emotions? How can the so called bliss found in knowledge be true bliss when it so temporal? It is temporal, isn’t it? For if it were permanent, would it not have given the bearer a stronger mind and a peaceful heart and hence a better control?
The answer to the question as to what does help in acquiring that control and that peace still runs away from me. I do not have a satisfactory answer. I do not even find myself anywhere close to the answer as well. Sometimes I feel that there is no answer to the question. Sometimes I feel that whether people are born with some tendencies and there hardly seems to be any way to fight it. There seems to be hardly anything a common man can do to change the world around him. But the quest for the answer must go on. There is something on the inside that drives us to search for the answer. Again, one does not truly understand what that thing on the inside is! I guess it is best to not ask that one question and keep looking walking forwards only with a desperate hope of finding some meaningful answer to these bigger questions.