तेरी मेरी लाइफ बहुत अलग है.... Are we so different from each other?

What makes us so different from each other? Is it the quality of life? Is the extravagance of one and the deprivation of other? What is the category on basis of which i can say that i am not you? Is it the physical boundaries that can help put one another at an arms length? And one thing that i would’ve guessed right, is thats too many questions for the time being. It’s not about what we ask but what we chose to be the answer to our questions, i guess, makes us what we are.

So if any of the questions above present themselves to you as well, it would be wise enough to think about your answers well in advance.

Whenever i read a new book, or re-read an old one, there is a certain way i react to it. There is a particular essence that i take home from my experience of reading. I guess that’s what makes us what we are. If we look at two people reading the same book at the same time, maybe its a difficult scenario to imagine, you could just think of any engineering college’s hostel and of course i didn’t mean books which are useful in curriculum. Each one takes along with them their own perceptions and fantasies, once they are done with the ‘reading’. The same logic applies to movies we see. For the matter of convenience, lets assume we are talking about a well seen movie, “Sholay”. There aren’t many people who would want to be in “Thakur’s” place in real life. Infact Sholay was never about revenge, be it thakur’s or veeru’s, its always been the hidden story of Ramlal. A character without whom there could not have been anything possible. Try and recollect his invaluable contribution towards making the movie a resounding success.

For those born and fed on hollywood examples, try imagining IronMan without Jarvis, or for that matter, The Dark Knight without the gadgetry of Mr. Fox. Painfull. Takes the fun out of life.

But then coming back to real lives and our differences. Before i come to that, lets see some common mishaps, which we generally encounter in our day to day lives.

Lets start with mishap number 1, Marriage. Irrespective of religion, race, caste, or creed there is not one married man who doesn’t identify with all the wife jokes or even empathise with the husbands in the jokes for that matter. Same applies to wives too. Husband’s are the bane of their life. They too seem to be facing the same domestication issues as faced maybe by Eve with Adam. I hope they were married. Infact most wives or girlfriends or fiancees, all of them, face the same issues as faced by most dog trainers.

Teach shopping (sorry teach enjoying shopping)

Teach behaving in front of guests, read in-laws

Teach table manners, don’t ask for food you will be shown your dish on time

Don’t yelp, when kicked, even if in the balls. Its a way to show affection

The list above is not exhaustive and the order may vary from people to people, which also kind of brings us to the next mishap,

The mother-in-law. This one has been the favorite since time immemorial, and for all ages and stages of any marriage. A mother in law even after being extinct from a marriage, can cause the same pain as she could have when she was around. Nothing brings people together like the pain of been through the clutches of their mother in law. This goes across genders, race, caste, place or religion. Despite there being numerous examples of relations going otherwise, i guess the second biggest reason for divorces after marriage is mother in laws. For reference google Bindu, Aruna Irani, or even in hollywood, there was a not so recent movie called monster in law. I rest my case.

On an individual basis it may be highly improbable to predict events and happenings one goes through in their lives. But when you bring the Theory of Generalization into the picture, a lot of things start making sense. Which brings me to this theory of generalization. It is the habit of socially judicious individuals to generalize the over all effect and cause of happenings. Say if i observe a large number of people visiting a particular place on a particular day, i wouldn’t be wrong in generalizing this and assuming that they would do this again the next occurrence of the same day, or that they are a riot inciting mob coming together with an ulterior motive, time to open fire on them. Its this sort of cause and effect reasoning which forms the backing of this series of blogs. Hence the rider of reading it at your own risk.

Using this theory of generalization, i came to the conclusion that life follows a very predictable pattern, as following,

Birth -> Teenage -> Adulthood -> Middle Age -> Old Age -> Death

Again, like i said, the individual stages may vary from people to people, stage to stage, but when you look at it from the perspective of life as a whole, this pattern does not take into account, what species you are, where you were born, who brought you up, which food you ate, even what you have been drinking for that matter. It makes a lot of sense to view life as combination of linear phases, sometimes the phases, move forward and backwards too, but its the same progression, life follows, without differentiating. Life doesn’t come with plans to mess these stages, unless you are a drunk teenager, high on money and speed on the roads, and you happen to mow down most adults in your path. Then the stages do get mixed up some what. For all.

In order to understand the difference which aren’t there we have to move away from individualities and towards generalities, as thrown starkly towards us in our lives.

By life on the whole, i am now leaving the realm of human race and cutting across multiple species. Each species is on this planet is here to make sure they keep surviving and the most common way to survive is large numbers. No wonder stupidity is thriving and intelligence and common sense aren’t. The numbers game has usually worked for all the species, unless of course the species concerned are the dinosaurs, or the dodos, some got cheated by life so that others could survive, and some got killed by others for the fun of it.

With all the above astounding evidence there is one generalization which comes to the mind, once your remove the narrowing scope of man made differences there isn’t much that differs under the vinear.

Talking about man made differences, lets list a few, down here so that we know how deep down we aren’t different,

Economics
Because this is the biggest divider in today’s times. People look upto and look down upon others based on what and how much worth of mineral they have in their pockets and banks. Take that away, i think, humans as a race comes with the same biologically fitted parts, irrespective of what your income is, what your inheritance is.

Religion
Religion, people say unites alot. Yes when we look at it from a certain perspective. When we see how religions looks after millions of wanderers, takes them in, there are a lot of our race working towards the very good of all humans, but only if they belong to their own religion. Thats the divider which causes us to fight, spill blood, forego the very soul of our humanity. Religion on its own, in its closed group unites, but when it starts competing for supremacy, it becomes a killer force.

And when we try and apply these to say another species, they fall on their face. Lets for example, assume the same rules for a pride of lions.

Assuming that they divide themselves on the basis of economy and religions. Lets then see what would happen to hunting for food.

Lion goes on a hunting spree, comes back with three dead deers, lioness - what’s gotten into you, don’t you remember today is Tuesday? we don’t eat deer today. Imagine the lion running along back to others to dispose them off. Next week when goes hunting on the same day, he’s going to definitely eat a portion before heading home.

Lets put the economic angle into it. If real estate were to come into play when deciding where to live for a lion family, what would be the scene like?

Lion - Lets chose this one, its closer to where i frequently go for hunting.

Lioness - No, this has no luxury amenities, what will my relatives say when they come to visit, we have just one level den, the other lion has a three level den with an attached mini jungle too. We can’t live here.

The above conversations do sound foolish, when looked out of context of anyone else but human beings. We are so used to these small social and cultural idiosyncrasies that we take them as rules, as norms for granted. Anyone who walks or behaves out of those is different.

There are a lot better ways to be different in this world. We are different when we chose to get affected by the real reasons behind our suffering, behind suffering of our fellow humans, when we want to do something towards better of all and not just filling out petty coffers. We are different when we help people in achieving their purpose in life, and not just preaching about what ways are there to get to god.

Eventually all the difference that there is, lies in what we believe to be true. That stems from an awakened consciousness, that stems from common sense. That’s what makes us different from one another. Rest all are same.