Too Busy to Care

Mar 12
NabanitaDhar


I am too busy to care, but want to do something. Jaago Re and BlogAdda.com are helping me do my bit for the society.

In today’s world who has the time to look into someone else’s troubles. We are constantly in a rat race and hardly see anything beyond the all important ‘I or ME’. What has the world come to? When I was younger I knew who my neighbours’ were. We would visit each other’s houses and were always there for each other if need be. Today I do not even know who lives in the flat just across mine! We have weaved so many cobwebs around us and are running towards something but in that losing out on so much. Not only that but we have become utterly self obsessed and the existence of anyone else is hardly of any consequence to us.



However sometimes irrespective of all the materialistic purists; the humane side of us does manage to come out. Perhaps it is our bai who manages all our household chores; or it is the beggar who we pass everyday while on our way to work or the young garbage picker who instead of enjoying his childhood has been drawn into the doldrums of life- whosoever it is, fact is at certain times we actually feel like doing something for them. But what can we do?

Time is of essence these days and we do not have enough of it. Nor do we have the luxury to give up our jobs to venture out to change something in this society of ours. Then what do we do? What can we do? These and many such questions have often puzzled me but the pressures of profession and personal life was too much to even think of doing something.

“Act as if what you do makes a difference.  It does. “ Really??

Passive online activism well definitely but who would go out and pick up that one person in dire need of help and actually do something? Whenever there is rape or child abuse I am quick to conjure up a status on Facebook or tweet some morally correct line or perhaps even blog. But what use is it of anyways? What changes with a few lines of mine on the social network? Some might argue that many uprisings in Egypt, Libya started with such activisms but still. I do not see my Facebook status with a few likes in it actually bringing a smile on some needy child’s face in a dingy hut. So what could I do?

I had often heard ‘Charity Begins at Home’ and that’s what clicked. So what could I do from the comforts of my home, selfish as it sounds? Mother Teresa had said ‘If you can’t feed a hundred people, then feed just one.’ So I decided to help that one person who I could. I have a bai, my life saver! She works her butts off to provide the best for her children. Her husband is a habitual drunkard and would often abuse her and her children. Well I knew I could atleast provide them basic needs like clothes. Atleast she didn’t have to spend her hard earned money on that. So I have been giving away clothes for her daughters and son and even for bai herself at regular intervals. Every time I give them to her the smile on her face is so satisfying. It gives me the feeling that atleast I have brought smile on the face of someone other than myself and my family.

We humans are actually creatures who need to feel good about ourselves all the time. Everything we do; good or bad; is always about us. Even in that if we can atleast help out someone else it’s always an icing on the cake. So find that one person around you; don’t have to go far; maybe that someone is your helper or your driver. Just do small things for them and it would make them content and at large would make this world a better place!

“I am only one, but I am one.  I cannot do everything, but I can do something.  And I will not let what I cannot do interfere with what I can do. ”