Waking up to “Vellai Pookkal” (White Flowers – a beautiful composition by the one and only AR Rahman) the other day got me thinking about peace. Well, not just about peace, but a whole lot of other things that are missing in our world. Now, you wouldn’t want me write a blog about poverty, war crimes and world peace, would you? I didn’t think so.

Let me be blunt with this. The root cause of all evil in this world is ‘matter‘. I am talking about the verb here, not the noun, as in…

Things that matter. Things that don’t.

Try and observe yourself the next time you go driving. Do you get flustered when that auto-rickshaw in front of you keeps crawling and just doesn’t give you way? Do you find yourself spewing curses at that young-blood biker who just cut you off, just so he could show off his stuntman skills? Do you feel like getting out of the vehicle, walking back and thrashing that one guy who doesn’t quit honking even when the signal is red? If your answer to any of these is ‘yes’, welcome to the club. I feel all this and more.

Is it really worth it? What would you achieve with the 2 minutes you saved by getting ahead of that auto-rickshaw? [Before you answer, I am assuming two things here – that you were not driving an ambulance and that you did not have, in your vehicle, a pregnant lady about to give birth!]  Will the stuntman biker even hear your amazing ‘vocabulary’? What would be your gain by using anger as your weapon of choice against that crazy guy behind you?

The frustration that accumulates from such encounters would just stick on to you. You would reach work/home and try to shake it off by having a fight with your boss/family. It wouldn’t let go. You would then get pissed off and try to concentrate on your work/go to sleep. It still wouldn’t let go. The whole scenario would have been different, had you just taken a deep breath and waited for an opportunity to pass the auto-rickshaw or let the biker go his way or let that crazy guy honk away. That moment of frustration would have passed, thereby leaving you a happier person.

Now, think along the same lines, but in a much larger scale. Wouldn’t the world be a better place if people would just let go of things that really didn’t matter? Wouldn’t we lead a healthier, happier life? Wouldn’t our children feel safer living in a world that does not try to hurt or abuse or kill them the first chance it has?

Sigh! Here’s hoping for a better tomorrow:

May white flowers bloom all over the world.
May the world dawn to a dawn for peace.