I happened to volunteer in a project, which had a big house/place to maintain. Thankfully, I was not the only volunteer for that. We were about six people with small variations by week as people keep on coming and going. Work was always scheduled the night before by project leader and was always equally distributed. Frankly there was not too much work and you do not feel like working. We had simple work like prepare breakfast and other meals, clean eating places and of course the rooms and places we live and use. It will take maximum four hours a day, if u are doing it alone. Sometimes as less as two hours! Best of all this place was in mountains and there were plenty of trekking paths around. I always had time to go out for a walk after lunch. A beautiful stay.
The days I spent there, I learned a lesson about us, humans, and the way we think. When I came, we got assigned to clean the place as the season was about to start. After long closure for winter, it had enough to clean. Project leaders were good to assign always in small parts. When I started to clean a part of the place to the level I would prefer, I got to hear the same message from other volunteers who were already there. The message was almost like, “Oh, do not put that much effort. Now we just do the basic cleaning. There is a big cleaning coming. When it happens then we clean it all properly”. Within a week season started and business was in flow. All the time that I spent there, the big cleaning never came. The people who told me so, they left the place without doing any “big cleaning”. How could they do the big cleaning, it was never there. Only thing, which was there was the need or desire of the existence of the “big cleaning”.
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| The big debate |
This seems very similar to the need to believe in existence of GOD. What is the need? The need to find a way to excuse and give some simple answers. Excuse to be lazy, excuse for not to put an effort, excuse to postpone, excuse to have a feeling that someone else will do, to feel that there is a super power that will solve the big problems. As we developed our mind, from the very 1st discovery of tool to break bones to develop quantum computers, all were ways to make life simple and easy. Whether those discoveries and inventions really made life easier or hard is another subjective discussion, may be to be handled in different article. But at least main intention was always to make it easier. Which in other way made us more and more lazier in a sense. Not just at the physical level, but we used the same technique for mental efforts as well. As we did not have to spend a lot of effort on collecting food, our mind got time to wonder and think about strange things, which were never so important before. Ages ago, we could simply watch a flower and smell it or drink water, without wondering why do they get different color? Now we had new questions; some for which we could find answers and for some we could not. For those mental questions, e.g. why are we different than other animals, who made the earth, water, stars etc. , we developed the idea of GOD. It made things easier. If a child or a person asked one of those questions, one could point it to GOD. Why did I not have a good harvest; pray to GOD. Will I have a safe winter; pray to GOD. Why I am not happy; you should pray to GOD. And many other such questions. Similarly, in the physical domain sometimes we found a solution and other times we created the need of a super hero. Some times this super hero was GOD and other times BATMAN!
We will probably keep on finding answers to our questions as we develop. May be these questions will end before natural extinction of mankind as calculated by scientists. May be we would still have the last question left, if we will come back again or who will rule the planet before the end of the earth. Whatever happens in the future, it seems we will keep on finding new ways to make our life “easier”. In some cases we used scientific methods , in others we find more excuses to pass on the work to somebody else or to GOD.
I started to clean the place by myself in parts, section by section, a little effort every day. Place started to look better as it could without replacing the furniture or tiles or wall paint. As the days went by, life got busy for project leads. As there was no visible need of major repair, nobody felt the need of “big cleaning”. At least till the time I was there, neither the “need” was their nor “it” ever happened. If we live by moment, take things as they come, put a small effort everyday and do not create too much of “virtual” world around us, many of the “needs” go away that would need a super power. I do not know if mankind will ever find GOD in science or theology or spirituality. If we do a little cleaning every day outside and inside and do it with a smile, may be there is not a need to find “it”.
Love
Arundeep
A teacher was testing the children in her Sunday school class to see if they understood the concept of getting to heaven.
She asked them, “If I sold my house and my car, had a big garage sale and gave all my money to the church, would that get me into Heaven?”
“NO!” the children answered.
“If I cleaned the church every day, mowed the yard, and kept everything neat and tidy, would that get me into Heaven?”
Again, the answer was, “NO!”
Now she was smiling. Hey, they’re getting it, she thought! “Well, then, if I was kind to animals and gave candy to all the children, and loved my husband, would that get me into Heaven?” she asked.
Again, they all answered, “NO!”
She was just bursting with pride for them. “Well,” she continued, “then how can I get into Heaven?”
A five-year-old boy shouted out, “YOU GOTTA BE DEAD.”