I want to live serving others or so I thought—even if it is as smallest thing as reducing the selfishness within me. That's what I have decided to live for and thought it's meaningful.
It all sounds good and it has made me feel good about myself or feel significant for my insignificant existence in this world.
To put my intentions into actions, I made a deliberate and conscious choice to become a social researcher at a research firm. I believed I needed to learn about people at grassroots level if I want to help the majority, the underprivileged.
I've been exposed to overwhelming amount of information, facts, narratives of common people in my country.
I've been really overwhelmed knowing about their struggles for simple basic things like water and food. However, the most shocking thing is not how poor they are or how so few choices they have—it is the fact that nothing is new.
I have read and seen those things in other parts of the world or different times in the history.
Lets look at the world we are living. We are living in a world where the wealth of top 85 equals the poorest half of the world; masses are being ripped off opportunities or being systematically enslaved by their choices being limited; the society is enormously stratified; we are reading news about shooting innocent children in schools,gang raping, cooperate exploitation.
All those crimes and injustice have happened over and over throughout the history. Only the context is different depending on the situations surrounding that particular era. The very basic human nature is the same—the will to power and the hunger for more.
I sometimes wonder if the humanity is doomed, and if it's worth fighting for a losing battle.
When I look at myself, I'm still not very sure if I want to serve others because I want it from the bottom of my heart or, it merely comes from this egoistic hunger for more, a desire to believe that I'm better as "I" live for a noble cause.
As much as I want to deny it with all my power, the latter seems to be true.
I have no way of knowing until circumstances come for me to make choices that are against my self interests. It is much easier for me to think about the ideals while I don't really have any big moral challenges or forces that could push me against.
It is quite comforting to intellectualize about how the world should be than really changing the world.
But, when there is a chance, do I have the courage to fight against all the forces that are against me? Am I gonna be frail at some point? Am I gonna get tired of trying? Or is it really meaningful at all fighting a losing battle?
Then I saw this:
"Naive, dreaming Adam. He who would do battle with the many-headed hydra of human nature must pay a world of pain & his family must pay it along with him! & only as you gasp your dying breath shall you understand, your life amounted to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean!"
"Yet what is any ocean but a multitude of drops?"
- David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas
Maybe one drop is nothing in a limitless ocean. But those rare few people who believe in an ocean filled with a multitude of drops are ones who give so many of us hope. Every time we are hungry, thirsty, lonely, sick, hurt, or broken, it is their act of kindness and love, and their conscious and consistent effort to heal all these wounded souls that makes a huge difference to us.
Maybe we should join them so they don't feel that the whole universe is against them.
