Diversity of Human Nature

A very dear friend of mine lost her husband after decades of togetherness and years of looking after him through old age and sickness. In her sunset years she had reconciled to a life of spirituality and social work, living comfortably in her own house. She had allowed some relatives to live free of cost in another house that she and her husband owned. She was vaguely thinking of gifting the house away to them when she received a shock that they are making efforts to grab the property clandestinely.

Image Credit: Ramana Murthy MV, RM on Facebook

Being a very compassionate person and very peace loving, she did not want to fight a legal battle, but many of her friends convinced her that she should not allow such greedy people to get away with their crime. Reluctantly she filed a court case, followed it up for years, and won her property and its possession back.

She was not happy with her victory. She was left with sadness that people who could have just asked her and perhaps she would have given it to them, had such cruel minds to try and usurp something that was not theirs at all. Imagine her large-heartedness - one day thinking aloud she said, You know, I still feel like giving it away to them, they are not very rich!

Such is the diversity of human nature. When we see extremes of human behavior, the good and the bad, we marvel at the variety and surprises that life offers us. The redeeming factor is that most of the greedy people are balanced by the utterly selfless and generous ones. It is up to us to identify, acknowledge and appreciate them.

By Ali Khwaja

Characters

Image Credit b/w: Nelson Felix Giga, cc-by-2.0, flickr.com