“I” and “You”

Shelves are full of books in the “how to” genre. How to live a happy life, how to impress others, how to make friends, how to win or be successful etc. It does not appear right to say that “there is so much chaos and disorder in the world because people are not reading these books”. In fact, the demand is more than ever, which is a clear sign that there is an ample number of readers of these books, but still the chaos. In fact, the thirst for these books is more than ever. The thrill to compete & dominate is bursting out of all aspects of society and we as humans have never been restless to such critical level.

The pivotal questions is: Why is it so? Well, what should have happened is not happening. The core is rusted, the foundations are weak, and while this is the case nothing will ever work. Even if something appears to be working, it is nothing but a temporary illusion.  The issue lies in the separateness, the fabricated boundaries and assumptions of characters which aren’t real.  We are constructing our lives on an assumption of separateness, which accounts simultaneously for the proliferation of the “how to” genre and the chaos of the world.

The modern day idea of winning, success, competition & dominion is deep rooted in demarcations of ‘I’ and ‘You’ and all distress & chaos are ripples of this idea. If we pay little attention to this ‘I’, it is nothing more than a bubble in a cosmic current. ‘I’ was not, and ‘I’ will be not in matter of few days. For example,  ‘I’ eat an apple and it becomes my body part in few hours in form of flesh & blood, then ‘I’ will die and it will all be mud one day. Another apple tree will come out of this mud and some other human like me will eat the apple from that tree and that will become his body. So where is that ‘I’? The air ‘I’ and ‘You’ breath is the same until we inhale and tag it as individual’s breath. ‘I’ and ‘You’ are taking heat from same ‘Sun’, we flourish from one heat source. The name given to me are some sounds & meanings by people external to me, from the periphery. My ideas are repetitions of talk by people around me, societal norms or what my favorite series is  throwing at me through my television.

The success “I” aspire for is just a definition of success in the society ‘I’ live in. For a Farmer boy, it might be more farms, cows & horses. For a city boy, it might be a lucrative job or business, electronic gadgets, home theatre, smart phones or cars. The two distinct “I-amness”  are only because of different upbringings & environments. This is just a small glimpse of ‘I’ & ‘You’ and we can see ‘I’ trembling and saying, “Where am ‘I’ if this all is coming from ‘You’, the Other”.