Lately I have been reading a lot of newspaper articles about how someone who appeared to be normal suddenly went ballistic and committed random crime against innocent people. Such incidences are quite disturbing and shake all of us up. So besides being appalled and hateful towards such people is there something else we all need to do?
Nice People
First let me talk about ‘nice people’ of mankind. Whether a person is nice or not is usually judged based on social manners, politeness, and overall sweetness. Society will consider you nice so long as you follow its rules of niceties. These people almost have a different demeanor when they are around people they know and different around others who have nothing to do with them.
Best example of this is – a person who is generally considered nice by his friends and family becomes a maniac on the road and rude to others when he knows he is anonymous. Another example of this is “mob phenomena” – where hundreds of “normally nice people” will vandalize and even kill in communal riots.
Death of a good person
A good person (different from a nice person) is a person who shows kindness to all. Such people are also usually soft spoken and can be pushed around by others as they like to avoid conflicts or hurt anyone. They take it upon them and let a rude person get away with things. Of course when others get away many with small meanness and inconsideration, they continue to do that. Many such nice people continue the pattern of taking “good person” for granted to the point where the person explodes from bottled up frustration.
So who is responsible for this explosion. Almost all of us will the person who exploded and hardly anyone will try to understand the root cause. It is easy to criticize the explosive behavior but really difficult to look at our everyday small gestures that add up to someone’s frustration eventually.
So next time, you are talking to a public servant (bus conductor, air hostess, telemarketer, cab driver etc.) who deals with many many emotions daily, make it a point to cheer them up / thank them, treat them as a human being.
Yes, you may never meet them again, but who knows your smile may just make that person’s day and save a good person from dying.
Saw Paan Singh Tomar, and felt he was one of those ‘Good person’ that the system killed (much before his actual death).