Birthday Wise Guy

So, my birthday passed a couple of days ago. I thought to myself: another year older, another year wiser. Although that does ring true during the pandemic, it doesn't really fulfil its meaning to a monumental extent; according to me. Wiser? Have I actually become that? Or is it just another updated version of a long-existing mindset? I ask myself. Though the answer to those questions is still undefined (and perhaps will continue to be), it just means that I have to become truly wiser, and not just in its nominal sense.

I'm talking about being wise so much. But what does it imply to us as individuals? You might hear others say, 'Don't get wise with me.' or 'You're a damn wise guy.' The word, which usually means having the capacity to have good judgement and apply knowledge, can also point towards someone having too much of that insolence! It's ironic to see that a valuable term like 'wise' having an unpleasant flip-side as well, like most things; of course. That's one of the funniest things of the English language, and especially of life!

The pandemic has validated my choice of being an introvert because I have the privilege to exercise it. My mother expected me to ask for a party at a restaurant, with the guest list comprising six to seven of my friends; all wearing masks. Choosing that would mean my ruin, obviously: a day spent simply by reading and eating would be wasted. Perhaps organising an elaborate birthday party at the calm before the storm of the third wave would have made my mother happy - but I didn't accept it. We tend to be very selfish sometimes, don't we? Unapologetically doing things which we wouldn't normally do?

That evening, my parents and I went to a temple to make donations. I had a huge excess of new clothes, and I knew that being grateful and giving to others is instrumental to raising one's intrinsic wisdom. I saw the desperation of the limited amount of the destitute whom I came across. They were clawing at the packages as if their survival depended on it, like a teeming mass of uninhibited passion. The by-standing policeman regulated the crowd, even striking at one of the elderly women for being too "violent". They were starving, for God's sake! Even I would be grovelling at the ground if I had nothing to lose, giving my so-called "dignity" as a human being up. But here lies the difference - I am not present in that condition, at least for the foreseeable future. As a privileged girl from an upper-middle class family, I can only imagine how life is terrible for those beautiful people. Some might call this sweet, but might take it to be insolence: what does she really know about it, that rich kid who has everything? It's true - I know nothing at all. It only becomes a clever sarcastic remark to show off the depth of one's thought: a wise guy.

Does it mean that everything is over for all of us? Of course not. The positive thing about our relatively well-off situations is that we can use our resources to make small changes. I was listening to a podcast episode last night, and the guest speaker elucidated on this. Make small changes in what is in your control, instead of worrying about how helpless you are at large. This is why we plan, this is why we execute.

Small changes transform the world.

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