The more I think, the more I get confused. What is that thing which is great/big/noble in this world? Everybody dreams to do something big., but what is big?
Todays materialistic world has made us associate greatness with materialistic acquisitions. I was recently reading an article on ‘Guru’, he is a Hero because he rose from rags to riches, he pursued and chased the ends no matter the means. People who watch that movie go back with a renewed spirit, wanting to achieve something more.
All of us are subjected to this peer pressure, of course with few exceptions. We want to do it because somebody whom we know did it, and (s)he is looked upon in the society. Our parents want us to do it because our friend did it, whose parents unfortunately happen to be friends with our parents! Damn!
People say that if we don’t aim at something big, there’s no progress. Progress is a word whose meaning I simply can’t comprehend and digest. Long ago, they didn’t have mobile phones, they didn’t know ‘cool’ ‘funky’ english words, they never had to fly to US to earn and save money, but they were close to their family, they still were in touch with their friends, they still earned enough to bring us up. Today, with the advent of so called progress, we have funky gadgets but we still find it difficult to remember our friends birthday, we earn a lot but we buy a lot, there is progress (is there?) but ** WE** never made progress. Cavemen hunted animals, sometimes ate them raw. They had to work for an hour a day depending on how nature felt that particular day and the rest of the time he could rest. We have the most sophisticated technology today, all you have to do is just feed a pile of potatoes to a machine and Phew! you get crispy, tasty french fries!! But still people work round the clock, around the clock, diagonal the clock, square the clock - there is no satisfaction, no time to rest. The average time women take to cook now has not reduced when compared to what it took then.
Sorry for the digression - coming back to big! It is a quantity which exists on the planet earth and is usually a result of comparing oneself (humanoid) with other humanoids irrespective of sex. Lets say we achieved what (s)he achieved, what next? There will be a new (s)he who has achieved something else and we unfortunately become aware of this and mercilessly change our definitions of big and start again. It might be progress, but ‘YOU ’ are not progressing.
Whether it was big or it was Progress, people then lived, people now live too - no matter what. And thats what matters!
-- What is Big anyway? I don’t know, I don’t care - its somebody else’s problem.