Fortunate Enough

Dear diary,
For long I have always wondered about criticism – its general and non-discreet availability from those who cannot tell between salt and pepper. About why if there was a girl in the house it is expected that she cooks AND has the natural inclination to do so. About Paris Hilton & Lindsay Lohan – one HAS to be in public to earn her daily bread, one cannot earn her daily bread because she’s too public.

But the most irksome of mankind’s traits I noticed quite prevalent is the profound, even justified, arrogance over one’s good fortune. Man is gravely ungrateful at his supposed good fortune, and is filled with a sense of superiority over those dissimilar to him, even in his own species:

“Hey your skin color is black, while I’m white! You will now be my slave – do everything I ask you to do without further questioning, even if it means selling your child. And you being treated like a fellow human shall henceforth be unlawful!”

“Look here donkey/camel/horse/ox/dog in the polar region, I will make you carry heavy loads (heaviest of them being my own ass) and keep spanking you until you die or we reach the destination. And when you die, I’ll console myself by calling you ’just a brute’.”

Looking through a friend’s Facebook profile earlier in the week, I saw a picture with three people wearing dark glasses getting a stream of “3 idiotts or 3 andhe… ha ha ha” one-liners. Resentment grew. Hatred brewed. I failed to comprehend why a person wearing dark glasses HAS to be associated with blindness and is deemed an insult. How does one not being able to see make the other person superior? Because (s)he can operate the computer better (Oh really!?), look better (Beauty. Is in the eye of the intelligent beholder)?

Anyway, FYI, all things in this world were designed in a way as to fulfil everyone’s needs in general. If all engineering happened with the visually impaired in perspective, nobody would know what hit them. Truly RP (Retintis Pigmentosa) style. And this logic would apply to every other inability a person could have, not just blindness.

But, but, but… I have to be honest. I’m only having these thoughts because I’ve been personally affected. I would otherwise have been completely oblivious to crushing the life out of someone less fortunate than I am – just like I stepped on that insect because I was too lazy to shift my foot five inches to the side.

Well, now I know. And I’m keeping away from wrongful pride at my good fortune. Yes sir. I’m not going to undermine anyone anytime for being mentally retarded, blind, deaf, mute, lame, tall-fat, short-fat, tall-thin, short-thin, fair, dark, rich, poor, ugly, in same ‘gotra’, hates pani-puri or any of its combinations, including those unsuspected and hence not listed. No sir.

It’s one of those I appreciate about RP. It makes me more humble. A better human.

Signing off,
Me

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