The
people who are driven by passion always (or may be most frequently) end
up in alienation by society and in loneliness. I always wondered why is
that so? How come brilliant minds like scholars, sufis, scientists,
writers, artists and great musicians end up in such an agony. Still I
found most of them contended. It seemed like societal norms did not
apply on them. So the agony part was always doubtful. I was told that
they become narcissists and hence they lose the balance that social
adjustment requires. I tried to study the private lives of these people.
From Aristotle to Russel, Voltaire to Neitzsche, Einstein to Edison and
Planck, Faiz Ahmed Faiz to Dr. Abdus Salam and Eqbal Ahmed, Muneer
Niazi to Michael Jackson.
I found that they too
tried hard to adjust, they wanted to adjust but somehow they were
rejected in their private lives. I was having a discussion with my
father last week when he was trying to convince me to leave the path of
intellectual pursuits, writings and scholarship after my wife lost her
tolerance on me. He quoted many examples from his experiences of people
who were idealists, some did not marry whole life, turned communists (or
were communists), turned agnostics out of their skepticism and all of
them ended up in alienation and loneliness and according to him solitary
confinement. He gave an example of a person who was a communist and
never married his whole life and in his old age, sick and destitue, was
buying some bread from a local tandoor. He was such a handsome person
during his youth that ladies would fall for him every now and then.
Still he did not marry and ended up in this horrible loneliness. It
definitely scared me but I was still adamant to know the reason of those
people’s content.
Let me put all blame on them, those driven by
passion; utopians and idealists. The psychological analysis of their
private lives revealed that those people had set some highest standards,
bookish and utopian, for them, which were not acceptable to normal
people. They think that caring about the matching of the curtains color
schemes did not matter, they would never give importance to groceries
nor will they care about utility bills, they think that everything is
trivial unless having an ultimate cause according to their ideals. They
abandon the thought of luxury and pleasure from simple and routine
things. They think that this way they can think better and can change
the world. Although, they do change the world but at the cost of their
own private lives. These people, driven by passion, would sacrifice
their loved ones, their daily lives and their social substance. They end
up being misfit, abnormal and crazy people. Narcissists to some, cynics
to others and yet content to themselves.
It is not that they did
not try. They were loved, admired and idealized by more people than the
ordinary folk. But this idealism, call it a curse or a gift, would prove
to be of no benefit to their own selves. The normal people who would admire
them, love them or even idealize them, could not bear the very fact that these crazy people cannot pass ordinary life. Their admirers forget that this is
the very thing that makes them different and desirable, that makes their
individuality precious and that makes them unfit as normal human
beings. Another agony that they face is that they cannot adjust with the
people of their own kind due to their individuality, example of Jaun
Elia in this regard can be pondered upon. Their content comes from the
admittance of the fact that there is a time in their lives when they
have to chose what is important, their passion, their idealism or
relations and a normal life? All of them chose the former. The content
lies in their freedom to chose at this point.
For many of the normal
folks these poor individuals, abandoned and lonely are afflicted to
agony and pain but in reality their selfishness in their choice is what
makes the same people admire them. Admire them or abandon them, because
you cannot keep them in normal and trivial cages of societal standards.
Their minds have been set free and they cannot be encaged any longer.
Only this way they could make that difference in the world, make it a
better place, if not for their loved ones but for the generations to
come. This very fact is the source of their contentment. These people,
driven by passion, are abnormal folks and they would proudly embrace
this fact. Even if they fail to make a difference, which they rarely do,
they would set examples for other crazy people. I found the source of
their contentment.
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