The world is a selfish place.
The world is a selfish place.
On the 2nd of March this year, early in the morning, 530 AM, I was driving to the airport to board a flight to Ahmedabad. About 10 kms short of the Bangalore airport, on the road, I saw a woman signaling cars to stop, to may be drop her to the airport. Cars whizzed by in complete ignorance of her, as did I. Moments later I had this question in my head, why didn’t I stop?
Was it because it is unsafe these days? Was it because I don’t care and it’s not my problem? Was it some other fear? I felt uncomfortable about it, took a U-turn, stopped my car. She sat on the back seat. She looked as if she were in her 50’s. Not a word said, I drove to the airport as I were, assuming she’s going there too. She was.
As we walked from the parking to the terminal, we exchanged a few words. She was still in a rush as if almost missing her flight. As we were entering the airport terminal, she said she had been waiting 45 minutes for someone to stop. She asked for an email address. I was carrying one of my books, I handed it to her and said she would find it there.
I never heard from her.
The question – why didn’t anyone stop to help out – hung in my head for a while. I concluded in my head that the world is a selfish place, though all was forgotten after a while.
On 29th of April, I was boarding a flight from Delhi to Bangalore. I’d reached the airport a couple of hours early. Before I tell you the most incredible story I ever heard, a couple more incidents…
On the 9th of March I got a call from one of our largest banks who wanted me to lead a seminar. This one was different.
My programs are usually conducted in front of a live audience at some gathering place: hotel, meeting room, or theater. I see the audience. They see me. I hear the audience. They hear me. I feel the audience (emotionally). They feel me (emotionally).
This particular inquiry was about doing a webinar. It was about creating a breakthrough in very quick time. But more interestingly, they did not want this webinar for themselves or internal purposes; they wanted an online video webinar for their customers. Cool.
As I got deeper into the conversation, I found out their business philosophy behind wanting to do this seminar, and it is for that reason I am sharing this information with you.
The customer, the bank, with offices throughout the region. Their prime objective was to help, and strengthen their customer’s business.. In short they just wanted to give customers some outstanding value in their businesses instead of finding tricks and sleazy ways to retain them. Incredible, unheard of, unprecedented - and I jumped at the chance. The world isn’t that selfish after all – some people are giving too. I had decided on this to be the theme for the seminar as well – to show businesses the value of giving to the customers.
Four days before the seminar, I received a call from one of the senior executives of the bank. He wanted a ‘kick-back’ on the earnings. At first I thought he meant that the bank expects some revenue sharing – if their customers were to go on to become mine too. I realized shortly that it was to be a bribe.
I politely declined. The seminar never happened. I learnt a week later that some senior executives convinced the management, that the seminar strategy was wrong and misplaced.
The world is a selfish place after all.
From 9th March to the 29th of April – I had been observing this behaviour closely. Here are a few:
In the boardroom of a very elite group of people representing the management team of a large multinational company – a meeting that should have taken 15 minutes (we had found the solution to the agenda item within the time) lasts five and a half hours. Reason – unknowingly everyone had a personal agenda. They kept negotiating about something or the other, kept adding something to that one issue to make sure that in the end, they all had some credit from it. At the end of the meeting when I presented to them what had happened – they were all visibly disturbed, though yet again all would be forgotten after a while, a very short while.
In Mumbai – five in the evening – an accident. A young man after an accident with his motor bike was wrapped in blood on the road. The crowd around him. Not one person to help the guy. All worried about the mess it may create for them. Its amazing isn’t it that we’ll all take the streets with candles and vociferously flood the television channels with remarks of heartburn, hurt and vows of courage after people have died (26/11) but not one of us will step forward to actually save a life.
En route from Mount Abu to Udaipur, I stopped on the way to pick up a bottle of water. Right next to the shop where the taxi stopped was a liquor shop. Groups of people merrily drinking and having a great time. Right next to these people, ten yards away was an old man lying naked on the floor. Covered in sweat, breathing heavily, probably dying. Everyone can see him yet no one can. As I start to walk towards this man, the shop keeper frantically calling out for me, runs to me, grabs me from the back and stops me – ‘sir, don’t get into this – you don’t know the village dynamics, just leave’ – My taxi driver refused to take him in his car to the hospital. I approached the police jeep parked ten meters from there to help the guy out. I got a reply in the crudest of accent – to mind my own business.
I don’t know who that motor-cyclist was. I do know that he is alive today. I don’t know who that man was and what happened to him. I know I could have done more but didn’t. The world is a selfish place and I live here too.
Yet I learnt on the 29th of April at the Delhi airport, a great lesson.
A lady in her mid fifties tapped my shoulder. She was the same woman I had dropped to the airport a couple of months ago. This time we had time, were on the same flight, she’d read my book – we had things to talk about. She happens to be a coach as well, practicing in Chicago and was on her way to Delhi on the day I first met her to catch a flight out. Today she was back to present a lecture in Bangalore. As we got talking and we were sharing views on the subject of ‘selfishness’ – She made a statement somewhere in the middle of our conversation, she said, ‘All of us behave in a selfish manner to either prevent us from something or to gain something. Yet in my and my husband’s life, we have a fabulous life because of an act of unselfishness.’ She then shared this incredible story..
She said she was 24 when they adopted a son. She was a mother to two daughters. Her husband at the time was a salesman at a grocery store. They lived in Washington. A life they had dreamt of had come true – the perfectly family completed with a son they always wanted.
She said a few days after Dinesh was brought home we realized something was wrong. Dinesh’s head hung too limply to the right side of his body. He drooled too much to be a normal healthy baby. Everyone thought that the baby will grow out of it but when its your baby you do worry about it. They took him to a specialist who diagnosed him with some condition and treated him for several weeks. She said that they knew it was more serious that that. So they went to another specialist who after a very exhaustive examination told them that Dinesh was a spastic. He will never walk or talk or even be able to count till ten. The doctor suggested that they put the child in an institution for his own good and more so for the good of ‘normal’ people in the house. It will be best for everyone.
She says her husband couldn’t conceive of a their child growing up to be a vegetable and grow up to be nothing. They had long talks. The trauma got to them. Two young girls at hand, limited income and the boy who they didn’t know how to bring up. It was best for him to actually be at the institution close by. After all they are not too invested emotionally yet in him. They’ll get over it. The government would sponsor it. After eight months of dealing with this, they were left with no choice but to put Dinesh in the institution, who at least knew how to bring him up. For the next year or so they would visit Dinesh whenever they wanted. No one liked it in the house, yet everyone was silently relieved. She says the act of selfishness had been committed.
She then said suddenly one fine day as a result of incidents similar to the one’s that I just narrated to her, she realized they had been just plain selfish. Just because of the fact that the boy was adopted, it was easier for them. A year later they brought Dinesh back home. They decided he’ll become a proud man. They went to another specialist who told them the same thing. Then another and another and another and yet another. Thirty different specialists said there was no hope for this little boy. Then they heard about a doctor in Chicago who was number one authority in the world on cerebral palsy.
The doctor was busy and had no appointment for thirteen months. They got his home phone and got him to agree to see Dinesh if there was a cancellation.
Eleven days later a little boy from Canada cancelled appointment and Dinesh got one. They bundled Dinesh up and flew him to Chicago. They spent hours and hours in his check up at the hospital. All the tests all over again. They started from ground zero. They got the best doctor in the world to tell them what was there. They didn’t hope for much.
The doctor told them this. This little baby is a spastic. He has cerebral palsy. He’s never going to be able to talk or walk or count till ten. That is if you listen to the prophets of doom. He said I have solution, I can give you a solution if you are willing to do your part. The solution would mean sacrifices you wouldn’t wish to make and selflessness that no one ever experienced.
“We would do anything it takes” was their reply. At that time they could barely afford the financial burden of a Chicago flight.
In minute detail the doctor said - you will have to work this little boy beyond human endurance, then you’ll have to work him some more. You will have to push him till he literally falls, then you’ll have to pick him up and push him some more. You will have to patience personified because it will be many months before you will be able to detect any progress at all. But if you ever stop he will go all the way back and you will have to start all over again. You have to understand that this is a lifetime commitment – not one year, not five, not ten – a lifetime. This is from now on. The doctor finally said- the other option is for Dinesh to be back at the institution. It will be easier for the family. The doctor quietly left them to think whether they want to go the distance with this child.
They went back home. They hired a physical fitness expert and a body building expert. They build a little gymnasium in the basement of their home and went to work. It took 14 months before Dinesh could even move the length of his own body. One day, five years later, she said I called my husband to come fast – Dinesh was ready the therapist says. Dinesh was positioned on the mat to do ‘a’ push up. As that little body got ready to rise in the air, she said, the physical and emotional energy in that little gym was amazing. There was not a dry inch on that little body.
The mats on the gym looked as if water were sprinkled on it. The mom, the dad, two sister, the neighbors, the gym instructor, the therapist all broke down in tears on seeing that one push up.
Listening to this story to me one thing is clear – happiness isn’t pleasure; happiness is victory in helping another one overcome adversity. Think about it.
The story is even more remarkable as not only the 30 specialists but also a leading American medical university had also examined Dinesh to conclude that there were no motor connections on the right side of his body. He will never be able to swim or to skate or to ride a bicycle.
By the time Dinesh was twelve – the family was in Canada - he would do 1100 push ups in a single day. He would run 6 miles non stop. He would do extremely well as a seventh grader in ninth grade math. He was good on the bicycle. He was on his school hockey team. He was a table tennis champion in his age group in the city. Dinesh, a few years later is only the second ever person to have a life insurance cover for a patient of cerebral palsy.
Its one thing to agree with a doctor that you will do this for a lifetime. Its another to actually do it for the next fifteen years – for a child that’s biologically not yours; for a child, even if yours - no one would have a question on integrity – if raised in the institution.
Five hours every single day since they met the doctor in Chicago – Dinesh had to work in the gym. How many of us would be able to hang in there for that length of time and seeing ‘ZERO’ results for years together?
Dinesh would cry in the gym everyday for being tired – everyday. He would ask his mother and father with tears of excruciating pain– “Do we have to do this” – Any mother and father will have trouble with that one – will be tempted to cut out the pain for the child as the results are not happening anyway… But not these, they loved him truly. They said no to the tears of the moment so they could say yes to the laughter of a lifetime.
The effort that went into this – physical and emotional – is absolutely monumental.
Dinesh, today is 27 years old. Married. A mechanical engineer designing cars for a leading luxury brand.
That morning at 530 close the Bangalore airport, his mother was on his way to be present for the birth of Dinesh’s child, her first grand child. She was deserted by a drunk taxi driver.
Dinesh’s story deeply touched my heart. It taught me a lesson I wrote earlier in the article - happiness isn’t pleasure; happiness is victory in helping another one overcome adversity.
Just a day after this, I was sharing this story in a program with my participants. A man seated right in front was visibly moved and had tears in his eyes. His daughter Smita, eighteen months old has cerebral palsy. He asked me for the doctor’s number in Chicago. After a call, we learnt that doctor had passed away a few years ago but his successor is as competent. The next day they spoke to the doctor and exchanged over mails – all the reports.
Just today I received a call from him (where after I decided to write this article) saying that the doctors say that this little one does not have cerebral palsy. He says the doctor said she was just born prematurely and been misdiagnosed. But because they have been treating her as she has the disease, she may have acquired some of the symptoms. The doctors conclusion – treat her as a normal healthy girl and you will have a normal healthy girl. Amazing!
Smita might never have discovered a normal life – if not for deciding to take a ‘u’ turn. Is that possible?
In order to cope up with the tremendous expenses in bringing up Dinesh, his father had to work days and nights, not just physically but smartly. Dinesh’s adversity forced the parent to level of success that she says they could never even dream of. They are highly wealthy, successful and well past the days of ‘salesman’ at the grocery store.
AND It all started with a decision to not be selfish.
Isn't it incredible that one act of unselfishness (a monumental one) transformed a life or person suffering from cerebral palsy into the most astounding and inspiring stories of human endurance; and a second act of unselfishness (a highly insignificant one of dropping a person to the airport) prevented a normal person from becoming a patient of cerebral palsy?
We can never get by life all by ourselves, yet we create a selfish world. I can’t even begin to imagine the number of possibilities that could have been created if only we extended ourselves just a little bit more. If only we were to give of us a bit more – we would manifest happiness.
My recent experiences surely lead me to believe – That which we share will multiply and which we selfishly withhold or prevent will diminish (including us)
Last week or so I have been in mind going through incidents and events in my life where I have been highly selfish. There are many. It also made me realize that till we keep saying that the world is selfish – we’ll keep living in denial of having to do something. After all, the world is to be blamed!!
Thus I conclude – I am highly selfish and you are just a reflection of me. No matter who on earth was to say this sentence, the polygraph instrument wouldn’t even twitch.
And that is simply SICK!
“What Giving again?” I ask in dismay.
“And must I keep giving and giving away?”
“Oh no,” said the angel looking me through,
“just keep giving till the Master stops giving to you!”
Anonymous
Yours’
Chetan Walia
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