BE CONSIDERATE BUT NOT DESPERATE!

Is anyone out there who haven’t travelled by air?  I guess that’s a silly question.  Every second person must have.

If yes, here comes my next question.  Have you carefully heard the safety instructions? Not much interested after first time, isn’t it?  But one instruction that it is very much in line with the human psyche and made a deep impact on my mind and laid foundation for this write-up

“Wear your masks properly before helping others”

Unless you are safe and secured you can’t help the co-passengers, how well said.

This reminds me of numerous incidents in my life involving me, my family where desperation to help others have almost every time led us into soup.

A petty example – page from golden days –  one of my junior requested me ” Didi (sister) can you get me an ice cream from the vendor standing in front of the school gate?  I could have easily said no as the moment was a crucial one, for our school bus was about to start.  But “holier than thou Pope” nature of mine couldn’t turn down her request for she was new to the school and her father has asked me to take care of her. I immediately obliged and jumped into action.  And there will be no prizes for guessing that there was a rush already hovering around that vendor.  Before I could reach and could place my order (I have to at least sound sophisticated 😉) I saw my bus moving in slow motion before it finally made an exit. I tried to catch it before it left me in tears (I was young too, just 10 years old).

I was almost perplexed at the thought of not having an idea of how I would reach home.  I went to the administrative office of school, tried my father’s office phone number as his office was close to our school. Tried his number desperately ( special mention : my father was a government employee and to reach him via office telephone was one hell of an exercise, vast extension numbers, always busy lines and at the end you end up either putting down the receiver in exasperation or leaving message to a third-party in a bleak hope of getting reverted as that was not a mobile phone era).

So coming back to my story, I tried and tried forgetting the fact that my father wasn’t in the office at all.  He was at home as he met with an accident and fractured his leg.  That nearly broke me.  Tears wouldn’t stop neither the banter of the officer at the desk ” why have you done this?  Don’t you realise how difficult it is for your parents to manage things?”.  Somehow the message reached home and finally my mom came to pick me up.  And I would not dare to look up at her in eyes (Indian moms have that amazing fear factor around them 😀) and I finally reached home.

After all these years when I think about that grave then – funny now incident I just ask myself “WHY”.

Why I haven’t said no?

Why I haven’t asked that girl to accompany me?

Why I haven’t enjoyed the ice cream as anyways I missed the bus, I could have cried after enjoying the ice cream at least 😁.

Moral(s) of the story:

• Never ever be desperate to always be in good books of everyone.
• Learn to say NO.  It’s okay, absolutely okay.
• You can not please everyone.  Doing so will only buy you problems and a tag of “FOOL”.
• Be considerate for others pain (you are a human for a reason) but desperation if grapes are out of reach could lead to an accident 😉
• Your desperation could have butterfly effects on others.

Remember this.