Happy yet guilty !!!

I could not digest the idea that the very weather which gave me so much joy and filled my void had forced some to commit suicide and created void in many lives.

It all started when I had one of the best evenings of my life, around ten days ago. I along with a friend, set out into the wild to explore nature in the rain. I was ‘literally’ on top of the world watching the hills change colours from lush green, to brownish to orangish. It was a treat to my eyes when the last rays of the Sun turned the hills to glittery gold. There seemed to be no end to my joy when I saw a rainbow for the first time in my life. Yet times when there was no sound other than that of breeze, water flowing, or birds chirping or my companion talking, there, at that moment, it seemed as if “it was everything”. I could feel the life oozing out within and outside, every second.

That conversation we had with the nature, and its beautiful replies filled the void in me that this mundane life keeps creating every now and then. That evening continued to linger in my thoughts giving me unfathomable joy, until … until… that moment of guilt stuck me. It was when I read in the newspapers that very week about the damage caused to the crops and loss to the farmers due to untimely rains. I could not digest the idea that the very weather which gave me so much joy and filled my void had forced some to commit suicide and created void in many lives.

While I continued to ponder upon this happy-go-guilty feeling, today another incident happened. A massive earth quake killed at least a hundred people in Nepal and tremors were felt across North India. One of my friends tweets me expressing joy and praising the day for giving him an opportunity to experience tremors for the first time in his life. I would have reacted the same had I been in his place. Nevertheless that happy-go-guilty feeling struck again. I am sure many of us have gone through such moments.  

When I ruminated on this idea, I could recall many such incidents from the past. I think we felt the same dilemma when we had to welcome 2005 new year after Tsunami in December 2004. Back in my home town, I remember people not wanting to celebrate Diwali after the cyclone Hudhud devastated the city of Vizag in Oct 2014. I also remember to have had an ounce of happiness that a war (Kargil) has happened during my life time, though felt sorry for the lives lost.

In all the above incidents there are certain commonalities. They are either natural or lie outside of one’s influence. May be if I had the power to stop a war or prevent a disaster I would do so, rather than enjoying or living the moment. On the contrary, I was never seemed to have been celebrating my helplessness, I think I was just living the moment. The best part of this feeling is my realization that what gives me pleasure is giving pain to someone else. There are and will be many more from which I continue to draw pleasure and don’t even realize that the same is painful to someone somewhere. Also, there is a deep social and geographical connection to this feeling. The guilt that follows the happiness is mostly confined towards people or places one is surrounded by or associated with. I hardly ever related this guilt to some happenings in the Middle East.

I neither have a great mind nor an imagination to assume that pain and pleasure get cancelled on this earth. But it seems so somehow!!! When we take a moment to think through such happy yet guilty moments, I hope it will only widen our thoughts, open our minds and will be able to treat more of ‘others’ as ‘significant others’ and ‘one of us’.