Let us first start out by making clear what a fanatic of the first kind is so that we are in a position to better understand what the fanatic of the second kind is about to tell us. The meaning of “fanatic of the first kind” is exactly the meaning of the word “fanatic” you already know. But the other day, I met this man sitting under a tree in my garden with a sad smile on his face. I asked him, “Who are you?” And he said, “Me… I am best described as the fanatic of the second kind.” I looked up with surprise. He smiled, “Do you want to know why?” I nodded. The following are his words.
I receive a call one fine day from a certain friend. He and I talk excitedly and we decide to make a plan to meet at certain place at 4.00 PM in the evening. I do not want to be late. I do not like to wait for people who are unreasonably late and in interest of fairness I don’t like making someone wait for me beyond the time chosen. I reached there at 3.55 PM and I wasted 35 minutes of my life waiting for him. When he finally arrived, he smiled with no trace of apology. The smile on his face was painful to me.
Another time I had gone to watch a play. Very sincerely, I took my mobile phone out and switched it to the Silent mode so that I would not be the one to disturb the play. But to what avail? The woman next to me caused me to lose fifteen minutes of play because the dialogues were getting entangled with her pathetic telephonic conversation. I glared at her and what I got back is a smile. Yet another time I was struggling to remember the answer to a question in the exam hall. Out came a shrill call from my side meant for the person on the other side. Answers were being exchanged as if nothing wrong was being committed. The mental agony it caused me could not be put in words.
I went to get some work done in a government agency. Following the straight most path, I read the rule book and played by it. I did not understand what was meant by “arranging documents in order” when they had already been arranged and twice checked. The end result did not come out as expected. It seems I had followed all the written rules but there were some unwritten rules about how cash was also a part of the documents that thus I had failed in that endeavor. At the start of a picnic, I reached 15 minutes late to the destination; my heart was beating faster in all these 15 minutes. With a cold sweat, I kept looking at the watch and a heavy feeling overtook me until I finally reached my destination only to realize the remaining party was a few hours late!
Once I committed a grave mistake of not being able to do a certain work on time. It filled my heart with incredible sorrow for having caused inconvenience to the other person involved. I had forgotten my sleep. No other thought entered my head except one – get the work done at the earliest and minimize the inconvenience caused. Having gone through perhaps the toughest hours I finally meet the other person and apologize to him three whole times. And the next time, when I am the receiving end, the other person does nothing to alleviate the anger and frustration locked within me.
As anger and frustration built, I had to choose whether to let it burn me from the inside or to burst out and vent it out of me. I choose the latter path. The next time someone turned up late and it was not the first time, I scolded him for half an hour for his failure to keep time. Another time, someone could not keep up his end of the deal in accordance with his regular trend; I thrashed him real hard to let him know my truest feelings. Yet another time, when someone could not stick to the planned schedule, again in accordance with his regular habit, I let them know how inferior it was of them to make that mistake. When the phone rang in the theater next time, I not only glared but voiced out what I truly felt about the ringing phone. And on each of these occasions, I was deemed an inflexible fanatic.
But was I like all those fanatics out there killing and torturing people? I could clearly see that I was not! And yet here I was being called a fanatic and why? For wanting to not be a minute late?! For wanting to not be the slightest cause of inconvenience?! For wanting not to be the one at fault?! So, who was I? The only answer I could come up with – “I am a fanatic but a fanatic of the second kind!”