In these weeks, there’s hardly any conversation that happens with anybody, whether at work or socially, that doesn’t start with a gentle enquiry about how each other has been affected by the pandemic. Everyone in India is affected, some very directly and others less so, but affected nevertheless, because people they know have been impacted greatly and they too have been touched by virtue of the effort they have taken to help locate oxygen, hospital facilities or support in cremation, and even if not that, just by the sights and sounds of news and social media sharing.
When we ask and hear, “We recovered, but so-and-so that we know didn’t make it,” or “Not my immediate family, but a friend’s parents and an uncle,” there’s almost a palpable relief that it is not nearer to our dearest ones, and quick prayers go out that it stay that way. We know everyone is someone’s loved one and that the grief is very personal for them, and that soon, it might be us, and yet, for that brief moment when we ask, we really hope the answer we hear is that it has come near, but not for the dear ones. Not as yet.
Love is universal and at the same time very self-oriented that way. We want everyone to be ok and yet, we are specifically concerned about people to whom we are closest.
At times of such deep and direct distress, we might at least temporarily, let the love for the immediate circles take precedence over larger, more universal love. We might choose to go ahead and get our loved ones vaccinated, even if it means beating the system by getting vaccine slots in suburbs that are a long drive away, and take from stocks we know are meant for local people who may not be as tech savvy. We might keep a small stock of medicines handy, just in case, knowing it might mean taking away from someone else who needs it right now. We might bend the rules here and there, trying to score an advantage, even if it wasn’t particularly ethical.
Love can keep us in a state of denial about how we might be subverting these values we thought meant everything, making us assert it as a right, feeling absolutely no guilt or remorse. Not at the time anyway, and perhaps never, justifying it by telling ourselves that if we had to make such choices again, we would do the same thing again, consequences be damned.The nearer the risks are to our dearer ones, the more we are willing to break our own rules and principles. It is hard to be selfless, to truly be altruistic at such times. It doesn’t mean it is somehow ok and that all is forgiven — just that there are no holds barred.
When people say, “All is fair in love and war,” perhaps this is what they are talking about — how in such war-like situations, love can make us believe whatever choices we make are fair, even when they are not.
Mahesh Natarajan
(The author is a counsellor with InnerSight)