By Subhasis Chattopadhyay
Why do people drink and smoke and think of harming others? It is their desire to be accepted and loved, which they do not receive in their immediate families and communities that make them hate themselves first, and then others. It is love alone, experienced first as a child, which prompts a person to grow up to be a giver. It is vital to give freely when we have freely received. However, this can never happen unless we have been loved as kids. Love is a doing word; it is not a noun: one has to work at loving those whom we take for granted.
Our neighbours and colleagues are some of the people we spend most of our time with. Yet, we find some of them the most difficult people to love; no matter what our religions are. As for Hindu and Christian celibates, it is sometimes very tough for them, to love those in their communities for they have not chosen whom they want to live, commune and spend their lives with. Think of living 24*7 with your colleagues. It is the greatest Cross that Hindu, Buddhist and Roman Catholic Religious have to bear. In a world where even marriages do not always stick, only God’s Love makes a celibate community bearable. But love is no easy thing: we need to pray to God to gift us the ability to love. To become Love.
To begin with, we must make an effort to love our children and not destroy their lives by judging them. We must not take decisions for them in their choice of careers, and we must protect them from predators. I have been informed that child-abuse is on the rise across India, especially within families, cutting across religious and linguistic divides. This, at this point in India’s history, is our greatest crisis. Had I not experienced love as a child, I would today hate others, across the religious spectrum and finally, hate God.
If you are an adult reading this and have inappropriately touched or looked at a child, seek immediate psychiatric help and turn yourself to the police for it is better for you to suffer now than suffer the Justice of God. If you know of anyone being abused, report that person ASAP to the police. Do not bother about what happens to the abuser. For if you protect the abuser, you sin. Let the little ones come to God. Do not be that person who failed to report child-abuse. Remember, child-abusers never change. They will always harm children; even those unborn yet, if you do not act now.
I began by saying that love is a doing word. It calls for social action. It calls for not merely reading about Jesus or the lives of the Saints. It calls for switching off the news, not watching Netflix and protecting India’s children.
The author teaches English at the PG & UG Department of English at Nara Sinha Dutt College, Howrah, affiliated to the University of Calcutta. He is annotating the Bible and has additional qualifications in the behavioural sciences. He reviews books on psychology for Prabuddha Bharata as a psychoanalyst.