Growth and individualism Vs Change and Love

I am writing this on the basis of my limited reading and understanding of current issues in our society and my love for spirituality – which I call as “understanding of self”.   As I see the world today, most people in our society – especially youth are stuck in dilemma and twist of above titled words in different ways

1.       Growth – Most people want to certainly grow in terms of money, power and status (read previous blog for more on this)

2.       Individualism – Most People want themselves to be accepted as they are and don’t want to adapt / compromise / Change

3.       Change – Everyone wants world to change for better so that they and society can live happily together

4.       Love – Everyone without exception - want to love and be loved

Spiritual knowledge makes me understand that everything we do starting from getting up from bed in morning to getting back in bed is for one common reason/gain – “Happiness or Sukh”. That’s the very intrinsic nature of our soul which is eternal and hence can’t change. So, in any society, every individual has this intrinsic nature to love and to be loved. In an idealistic society, which existed at some point of time (sometimes called as Ram Rajya) - people adapted to each other’s likes and dislikes, to find middle ground where they can live, let live, trust and forgive each other easily and hence could love each other deeply. Because most of them were aware that they are not body, but eternal soul and life is journey beyond body. So love was enough ground to stay with each other. Moreover, people earned love rather than demanding it; by earning means, they had self sacrificing qualities. Theory of objectivism says, love is actually our response to those few people we meet, toward whom we feel the high respect, admiration, and attraction. And before we can really grant love to those we value, we must be in tune with our own values and character, and know what it is we believe to be the right and the good, what qualities we are looking for in other people.

Every individual and hence society has both good and evil qualities, amongst the two whichever is stronger that ultimately decides our destiny. As time has passed now we live in world where the component of evil i.e growth and mis-quoted individualism in society is gaining more importance and love is taking backseat…may be two can’t co-exist in long term or maybe we have become confused and hypocrite.

Sometimes when I travel by Mumbai local, I see people crumpled against each other like animals, fighting, shouting and sometimes even beating each other. The objective of getting into that train was to reach destination which is office, working there will give them growth which means Money – Power and Status. So do people like getting crumpled? Answer is No – then why do they do it? To achieve something which will possibly give them happiness? In office employees adapt to what boss says, they respect him irrespective of his qualities, Doctor listen to their patient’s nonsense and vice versa, citizens listen to politicians and authorities for same reasons.  So we adapt / compromise for our growth and comfort. But Individualism says do what you feel is correct neither at expense of others nor to please others. Where is the real individualism in what we doing? So here comes the component of hypocrisy in us, we say to our loved ones to accept us as we are…but we adapt / change for world which is not in our hand and from where we may get material gain – Money, Power and Status.  So we want to change / adapt and work hard to gain money power and status which is a false and temporary, but we fail to change / adapt and work hard to earn love and give love even to limited people in our relationships. Every individual is different, so it’s certainly difficult to get all people around you with thoughts and deeds exactly as you. To love each other certainly we will need to tune into each other’s frequency; this doesn’t mean we are going away from our self. It just means in this small life we are respecting each other for mutual happiness.  So yet I haven’t got answer for simple question that, if wife or husband, father or son, mother or children can self sacrifice to earn money power and status why they can’t self sacrifice/change/adapt for each other’s love? Nevertheless I will continue my search…real test of love is always in difficult circumstances.

Ultimately when we die it will not matter how much money power and status we acquired, neither it will matter what we felt was correct / incorrect, but certainly it may matter how much love we gained because that was intrinsic quality of our soul which is the foundation of life. Stronger the foundation stronger is the building.