Is your virtue an offspring of fear?
A lot of us, including me, try to give our meekness a garb of honesty. We all are privy and participants in conversations wherein we crib about the growth of an aggressive, nasty, corrupt person in the organization while we stay on slower, normal curves. And collectively we moan, oh yes, he is growing fast today but in the end honesty shall prevail, the truth will be found out, he/she shall suffer, I will be rewarded, they would realize my worth and the other person’s shallowness.
Ah dear, sorry to disappoint you but that would never happen, you shall rot and he/she shall reign. And before I forget to mention they would prevail thanks to our so called honesty.
Let me try to explain my point with an analogy.
A meek person (the erstwhile believer in his honesty, a term I refuse to employ any longer in reference) is ‘honest’ everywhere. They are followers of law, rules, regulations and the works. Imagine this gentleman driving on a single lane road, staying within the well laid out rules and suddenly he finds a rogue driver trying to overtake him where there is no such scope and at the same time there is a big truck coming from the other side.
How does he react?
Yes, he slows down and allows the rogue driver to overtake and come in front of him.
Who was right, honest?
He was.
Who was wrong?
Rogue driver.
Who won?
Rogue driver.
Why did he win?
Not because honest driver was scared for the other person’s life and that was the right thing to do. He was plain scared of the situation and the possible damage to his car.
And his meekness lead to the rogue driver moving ahead and he falling behind.
As on the road, as in life.
We let them win.
The honest path for the driver would have been to stay on his path and risk the rogue driver hitting his car or ideally dying in a just accident.
Honesty is the toughest thing to practice. Path of honesty is not one of peace; it is violent, blood-spattered, aggressive choice. Only the bravest can take the blows of honesty.
Rest of us are just meek.
So I ask again….
Honest.…..honestly?
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2 comments:
You have raised some very interesting points here. However, I did not understand the example...
I feel a person who doesn't give way to a rash driver and invites the possible outcome (a bad accident in this case) would rather be called an idiot than an 'honest' person who insists on abiding by the law consistently.
Do you mean to say that to qualify as honest, one has to be so at all times, irrespective of other concerns?
Are all equipped to abide by honesty and other idealistic codes of conduct without any relaxations? Probably not.
Agreed that only the bravest can take the blows of honesty. But rest all just meek? No...
@ Gauri - encouraging bad behaviour can never bring any change. speaking literally about the example, only when you have the courage of taking the risk of accident will make the bad driver think twice before doing it next time. Anyone who is not willing to stand up and fight does get categorised as a meek spectator voicing meaningless words.
This piece is for me and a reminder for me. I am not calling anyone but me as meek.
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