Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Fact of the MATTER

One of the things I am perennially struggling with is why anything matters to anyone, and more importantly, whether everything that is supposed to matter actually ought to matter, and most importantly what are the things that really should matter?

So I gave it a try to see how far I go trying to resolve this struggle.

What are the things that REALLY REALLY REALLY matter?

Family – Yes. Family does matter, doesn’t it? After all, everything you do is for your family. You earn, you provide, you buy stuff, you cook, at some level it’s for your family. But then, there are cases where your own family can be your worst enemy. Brothers fight over property, Parents and kids fight over the choice of the spouse. And when I mean fights, I mean the “over-my-dead-body” kind of fights, not the quarrels over who loves whom more. Plus, the definition of family is kind of subjective. I might say my family is me, my wife, daughter, father, mother and brother, in-laws, and maybe a few cousins. But someone not on this list, could also be counting me as family. I get along better with some uncles than some others, so even if the relation is the same, I’d count some as family and not the others.

So maybe, I ought to qualify my statement further. The family, that gets along with you, matters.

So, may be, it’s friends that matter. But then if you had to choose a good family versus a good friends’ circle, you’re definitely choosing family, aren’t you? So compared to family, friends aren’t that important.

Jobs? C’mon, really??

Education? Maybe. It’ll probably help you get a job, but then you’re on your own. You almost definitely cannot have a job without the education. But do you have to go to school for that??

Peace? – If I were GOD, I’d say Peace matters most. And not the India-Pakistan type of peace. Individual peace. But I’m not, and most of the people I know are really not at peace, so I’d say it doesn’t quite matter as much.

GOD? – Definitely not. If God mattered, everyone would at least agree on which God to follow.

Or may be I ought to give up trying to figure out what matters and why it matters and just try to do what I have been doing well enough, so that the rest doesn’t matter.

But then if what I have been doing well enough, doesn’t matter, should I be doing it?