Right V/s Convenience

I recently attended a session, and the presenter was trying to explain the difference between doing “what is right and what is convenient” and then posed a question to the audience, after describing the scenario.


The scenario (is a different one) and is described as below:
“A project manager working on a high critical project leaves his office evening 8:30PM after finishing a smooth release for the project; he drives towards home satisfied of delivering the customer on time and with good quality. It’s his 4 year old son’s birthday and he knows that if he reaches more lately, his son will be hurt. As he is driving, he fails to notice the signal and skips it, invariably the traffic police stop him and he also obliges and parks his car on one corner. Police start demanding money and he asks for the receipt for the fine that he is paying. The police juts wanted to have the money and without any receipt but he was adamant to get the receipt. A long war of words follow and finally the police gives him the receipt and leaves. He reaches home at 11 PM and his son is asleep after waiting for long hours for his father”.

Now the question: “Is the project manager’s acting based on his principles? Is he right in delaying his way back home for a traffic signal issue?”
The answer was YES. .

It is sometimes so difficult to detach ourselves and say or act on things which according to our believed principles are RIGHT. The detachment once we are able to achieve, we can safely say that we can never do a thing for which “we have to feel sorry about”.
The biggest hurdle to overcome is the fact that most of us in our mind are more and more conscious of “our image” in front of others. We don’t take anytime to think if we can face our naked self and be what we are with PRIDE. The PRIDE of being ourselves has been wrapped in so much of layers of the image we present to the world that we lose ourselves sometime, somehow… .

The definition says the PRIDE is a feeling of self respect or self worth, then why is it that we allow our PRIDE to be dictated or defined by the image that others have of us. Why do we have to consciously be what the world seems to “See in us” rather than be “What we want to be”. .

We will argue for the sake of LOVE, LOYALTY, and TRUST etc… (Generalized everything as LOVE, since they all stem from that basic feeling) we will say from rooftops that we don’t have the right to hurt the person we love, or renounce the thing we love. But then the argument would be are doing it right by allowing the person to do things which are wrong just because we don’t want to hurt the person. Is the philosophy of Rights and Wrongs so relative and based on persons concerned in the act? Does love not act as a sufficient enough reason and motivation to correct the wrong in the person we love?
Is love supposed to be devoid of our own ideals, judgments and reasoning? If yes, then can we say that the person owns us completely, when we are actually living a dual life?.

Is love that we achieve from a person really worth the dual life we give him/her on their face? Without giving the complete sense of ourselves to the person we love, how can we be HONEST to them to our own conscience? Love, should be treated with the respect it deserves and not with such a duality of purpose where we use it for our own convenience and for keeping the world at large happy..

The second argument is again: What’s wrong in seeking comfort? In a sense that if my swindling on this side is going to ensure me a great future ahead, why not compromise a little on part of my principles. And many of us will say - “who cares for principles these days” Its best forgotten..

Well, there is nothing wrong in seeking comfort and neither wrong if we are looking for our won interest. But should we always resort to turn a blind eye to our conscious? We may not realize it fully but someday when we sit back and think about the days that have gone past, we will realize that there were so many wrong things that we would have done because it was convenient to do so. In the pretext of “seeking comfort” we follow a convenient route without a second thought if we one day become of victim of this “culture of convenience”, when some one would leave us midway in the name of “I acted based on my comfort”, its then we realize the “culture” we had practiced and propagated..

The third one would be let’s have peace everywhere. At this seems to be the mantra of all the modern day martyrs. Disagreements are now being termed as “quarrelsome, irksome”. Where one’s right does not seem to be “freedom of speech” but one’s right seems to be to “shut up” because we don’t want ourselves caught in any side. Where it is better to stand neutral and let the world decides whether it’s going to live or die. Where we decide “Not to act”, and take the pleasure of saying “I am not involved”, “I don’t have an opinion”. Sometimes this makes me wonder, where the world would end if every one of us wash our hands from the responsibility of making a decision based on our own opinion. Was the education given to us worth of only this?
They are many more arguments that will come forth; I have just mentioned the few that I have experienced. It is tough to stand by your principles. It is hard to be honest to ourselves. Feels like such a contradiction right? We talk of being honest, only with respect to others, without a question, are we being honest to ourselves , our conscience. The journey ahead for me seems to be very tough… Because challenges that remain unexplored are “how to decide what is right based on my limited knowledge, experience?”.

The other day I saw a Bollywood movie “Damini”, yes of course lot of clichés in it. But its one dialogue that seems to uplift the movie to a different level… It’s the dialogue by the judge….when he says that “Mahatma Gandhiji has told that our conscience is the first judge and then we are right in our conscience we will do everything to fight the odds that come against our belief”..

I will only strive to be right always to my conscience in whatever I do. Rest must be taken care of…