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Fulfillment of Destiny - Dr. S Radhakrishnan

A friend of mine, who has known me well for over 20 years, made a comment rather sarcastically that I am incapable of indignation, that I am foolproof, that I suffer gladly not only fools but the "sinful". I am afraid that this observation is not untrue. It is not easy to know the difference between good men and bad. Ideas may be theoretically divided into good and bad, not men and women, for each of us contains, in himself or herself, in varying degrees, the good and the bad, the high and the low, the true and the false. Besides, society has queer notions about right and wrong. Unorthodox personal relationships are wrong, while acts involving whole nations in war are right. Cruelty, treachery, and exploitation are condoned, while loving the wrong person not wisely but too well is condemned, though the latter is only a misfortune, not a crime. It is easier to make saints out of libertines than out of prudes and Pharisees. The infinite pathos of life calls for infinite understanding. What the "sinful" need is not abuse and criticism. They yearn to be understood; they long for a little comfort, for respect and rest. When they stand bewildered, when their nerves are stretched to a breaking-point by the strain of their own misdeeds and the contempt of the world, what they need is someone in whom they could trust wholeheartedly. Human affection is indispensable to them. Not compassion, which is a form of contempt, but tender regard which can overlook the past and help the future. There is no need to tread the road to ruin to the end. By a change in mental and spiritual disposition, we can check the rapid decline and prepare for ourselves a new destiny. It depends on us whether we take the rake’s line downhill to destruction or the pilgrim’s progress upward. I have every confidence in the power of love to evoke the right change. The friend takes the place of an analyst, who succeeds in removing the blind urges and fixations by exposing them to view. Some are silent, because they have nothing to say; others are silent because they have no one to say it to.

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