I was just wondering the other day how most of us become victims of circumstances. All of us react differently under different circumstances. Of course, that’s how it should be. But sometimes one does come across situations where reactions change in the same scenario.
I don’t want to create any more complexity. So let me get straight to the point. But before that I would like to recollect an incident that happened in my life very recently. It’s a very common incident that could possibly happen in any one’s life but just that probably there are only few people who could have given a thought to it.
Well, recently I was traveling by bus when as it usually happens, a lady with a baby asked for my seat. Now, I hate sitting in the aisle. You become the target of “some”(not all) old people asking for seats shouting so loudly as to how young people of today don’t even have manners and courtesy to offer seats (I wonder how they think this kind of shouting would actually work!! Infact I feel more irritated to give seats to such old people) or they really start pleading and begging with you so much that you feel so low and cheap of yourself to have even got into a bus so much so that you even consider walking from your home to destination instead of depriving them of their seats (Grrr!!), ladies with babies, school kids (No, not school kids. It’s actually the people standing next to the kids who urge you to give your seat to “the poor little kid standing with such a heavy bag”..Bah!! I don’t see a poor little kid..I rather see a happy kid laughing and blabbering something to his/her friends and who is so lost in conversation that he/she won’t even realize that somebody is talking about him/her), some irritating jerks who love to keep brushing against you or some irritating lady who keeps on hitting your head with her hand bag or her elbow (When you kindly tell her that her bag is hitting your head, she apologies furiously and hugs her bag closely only to let go of it after a while and yes, it hits you hard enough to make ya dizzy, just like how you would feel if a punch bag hits you from far-“Thud”)
Anyways, over to what I wanted to say. A lady with a baby asked for my seat and I, with no other choice, got up and let her sit. My head started making a 360-degree turn to see if anybody was getting up to get down at their stop. As it happens usually, nobody got up. And well all of a sudden, a “kind” lady is mid forties called me and gave her seat before she got up to get down at her bus stop. For a moment, I was kind of taken aback coz nobody has ever done this for me before. I mean a stranger. I just smiled back at her. It didn’t even strike me to thank her!!!What a fool I’m!!
It’s only after I sat, I glanced across and saw a girl standing right next to me. She had been standing there even before the lady with a baby asked for my seat. She was standing there so that she could occupy the seat when the kind lady in mid-forties got up to get down at her stop. But as fate turned out, I got to sit and she was still standing. That’s when I started to think as to how we all become victims of circumstances.In this current situation, I call the lady in mid forties who offered her seat to me as a “kind” person and I’m so “happy” that I got a seat to sit. But what if it was the other way around? What if I was the girl waiting to get the seat when the lady in mid forties got down while the girl was me who had lost her seat to some lady with the baby. In that case, I suppose I would have been so irritated and bugged up. I would have thought “Stupid lady! Can’t she see that there are other people standing as well? Can’t she jus get up and get down at her stop? What’s her problem now? And look at this girl. Another moron.Atleast she should have refused when the lady offered. Why God Why? Why does this happen to me?…Blah..Blah..Blaa Bla Blah Blah Blaaaaaaaaah”
In the same situation, the same lady would be perceived in a different notion under different circumstances. The kind lady becomes a stupid moron. The happy “me” becomes an irritated and frustrated “me”.
This isn’t a big discovery. But it is just a simple truth of how we react so fast in a given situation…of how we make remarks…of how we comment.. of how we express…and of how we feel..but not once we apply our mind..and not once do we put ourselves in the other person’s shoes and think of it in a different light!!
