Random Philosophy - Part 1

Shyam Chacha, having just got back from USA opened the box of chocolates for the kids. “Here, take as many as you want.”

The kids, having waited as long as they had, went for it. The youngest kid, a boy, got four, the eldest, a girl, got three, and the middle one, a boy, five. The youngest kid seemed happy about what he had managed, well, until he saw what his elder brother had got. Crying, he goes complaining to his mother.

A belief that gets ingrained into the system, partly due to the environment that we live in, and partly an inherent tendency, is that for someone to win, someone else has to lose. People don’t find happiness in getting what they want, but rather in getting what others don’t get. After all they’ll tell you that there are no win-win situations, only win-lose and lose-win ones. The basic assumption here is that the total amount of happiness in this world remains constant. So, how can someone get more of it, without reducing that of others? Put two such minds against each other, and is what we actually arrive at a lose-lose situation?

Siblings, as they grow up, generally realize that their competition lies not within themselves, but against the outside world, and that they must collude to maximize their strengths (even though the Ambani brothers may make you believe otherwise). However, if it is not with the siblings, it is with friends, if not with friends, then with peers at college or at work. Remember that maggu who would always lie about how much he had revised so that he didn’t have to teach you, or that member in your project team who would try to claim your work as his own in front of the boss.

Somehow, people always tend to view competition in a localized dimension, and the people around them as their enemies. Few would dare to think of their peers as god sent help to win the higher competition, the ultimate pursuit of excellence. And fewer would be ready to carry them along in that pursuit.

The mom, seeing the situation, asked the elder brother to give one chocolate to his elder sister, so that each of them had four each, a fair deal. The girl divided this chocolate into two and gave the two halves to her younger brothers.

“But, what about you?” They ask.

“Well, I had only wanted three.” She replied back.