[There was an essay competition held in the school sometime last year. It was conducted by some national organisation whose name I cannot recall right now. I found the topic a little strange and very vague: "If it is necessary for us to change to become what we want to be, why not initiate that change immediately, that which needs to be done at the earliest". I participated in the competition more due to the teacher's insistence than from my own wish. I was not very happy with what I wrote. I have written far better pieces than this. However, I'd like to know my readers' comments on the essay.]
To Change the World, I Change Myself
When I was in primary school, I
was one of the most careless girls in the class. On an average, I would lose a
dozen pencils and erasers in school every month. My mathematics examinations
routinely went badly because I would fill the papers with careless mistakes. My
evenings would be spent bulldozing the house looking for exercise books I had
adeptly misplaced. Then, when I was in class five, something clicked within me,
and I asked myself, “What exactly do you think you are doing? You are turning
out to be a good-for-nothing little brat. Is that how you want your parents to
think about you?” This is it, I decided. Things have to change.
Today, I am a much more
disciplined and well-organized person. I rarely have to hunt around wildly for
my belongings, and my grades have improved considerably. I have been able to
bring about these changes in my life by some observations and realizations,
like, one of the commonest of human flaws is that one often forgets that one is
guilty of umpteen shortcomings, and starts imagining oneself as perfection
personified. However, that is arguably the biggest barrier in one’s pursuit of
perfection. According to the Bible, the seven deadly sins are anger, pride,
envy, lust, avarice and gluttony and sloth. Every human being carries the seeds
of these sins. Only when one accepts and identifies one’s imperfection can one
begin making a conscious effort to eliminate one’s flaws and work towards a
more fulfilling life, and ultimately, towards attaining salvation.
Very few of us are fortunate
enough to know exactly how we want to spend our lives and see ourselves ten
years from now. Gerald Durrell, the renowned author and naturalist knew at the
age of two that he wanted to spend his life with animals. Sachin Tendulkar knew
his life had to be spent in the cricket stadium, Lata Mangeshkar knew she
wanted to sing throughout her life. But most of us commoners have only this
vague notion of wanting to be ‘successful’ in life. Most of us love to think of
ourselves as ‘different’ and ‘special’, but in reality, most human beings are
not only perfectly happy being mediocre and common, but try desperately to
follow the herd and be exactly like one another. Very few people have any
definite dreams and visions: they simply spend their lives drifting around and
being carried by the current like a leaf in a river. These are people who are
blissfully unaware of their flaws, and have no intention of being woken up to
reality.
Even for those of us who are
not so indifferent to our flaws, another great barrier to betterment is
procrastination. Yes, this is THE word. The word which we fear and despise, the
word which all of us knows to be an arch enemy of progress, yet the word which
finds a silent yet substantial position in most peoples’ lives. All of us know
that ‘tomorrow never comes’, yet we keep waiting for that tomorrow to get our
work done.
As a sixteen year old student
standing at the close of school life, if there is one thing that I have come to
understand well, it is that it is on myself alone that I have the greatest
amount of control. It is only myself whom I can mould to my liking to a great
extent. Gandhiji once said, “Be the change that you want to see around you”. I
try to follow his dictate and live the kind of life that I would like to see
others around me leading. For the last few years, I have been trying to live by
a routine. Sure, there have been blunders and slip-ups, but I have not given
up, and I count that as part of my success.
However, my quest for a better
life has certainly not ended. This is only the beginning. Very soon, I shall be
leaving the haven of my parents’ protection and entering the real world. There
are so many things that I would like to change about the way my society, my
country works. For example, most western countries are so much quieter, cleaner
and greener than ours. When Indians are told about these bitter truths, they
grow green with envy, yet only a handful of people actually do anything to
change the circumstances. It is thanks to them, people like Bittu Sehgal,
Subhas Dutta, M. C. Mehta and Chandiprasad Bhatt that the country is not
entirely engulfed in ugliness and dirt. I aspire to follow in their footsteps
and contribute something to the social and cultural development of India, and I
am proud to say that I have begun already. I make it a point not to accept
polythene bags from shopkeepers, and turn off taps and switch off lights and
fans whenever they are not in use. I know these are small steps, but if enough
people can be persuaded to follow these small steps, India will become a much
greener and lovelier country.
Sherlock Holmes, probably the
most famous of fictional detectives, once outraged his friend and assistant Dr.
Watson by saying that he had not known that the planets moved around the sun in
the solar system, and had no remorse whatsoever for not knowing it. To Watson’s
shocked exclamation of “But every schoolboy knows this!”, Holmes had replied
that he was not every schoolboy; he
was the great Sherlock Holmes. This can be dismissed as an unsavoury show of
pride, but I will always maintain, it is the Sherlock Holmes’ who matter in
this world, and not ‘every schoolboy’. That day in class five, I had decided to
start being what I wanted to be afterwards in life. Hopefully, my decision has
allowed me an access to the world of the Sherlock Holmes’ and the M. C. Mehtas,
and when the day comes when my life’s movie flashes before my eyes, it will be
worth watching.
