THE DUAL STREAM OF HUMANITY ... 1

Sincerity and insincerity run like counter-traits through the stream of humanity. While the former adorns the few that are the flavour of human society, the latter limits the personality of millions that disfigure the harmonic contours of a culture. The resulting tussle between these opposed tendencies constitutes the flow of life.

The first evidence of this counter-quality is in childhood when academic proficiency or lack of it is more often than not the direct result of the degree to which a child is endowed with this vital element of sincerity. When nature is raw and the elements unschooled in the refinements of social appreciation or denunciation, and yet a child is seen doing his work with meticulous perfection, exerting his all to produce a perfected piece of his labour of love, one wonders what distinguishes him essentially from the one that does not what he does so well. And the answer in simplest terms stands articulate --- sincerity.

One person from birth is sincere and another is not. You could call this the consequence of genetic coding or karmic inheritance or whatever fancy theory that you may devise to explain the difference but you cannot deny the divergence of approach to life's problems from its very inception by these two individuals of contrary natures. The careers of these two also assume divergent trajectories and this in turn resolves into the mighty complexity that characterises the world in its general outcome.

The stuff of all this difference in aptitude and attitude, exertion and execution, aspiration and appreciation, perception and performance is the domain of investigation and analysis of the psychologist and the geneticist and eludes ordinary understanding but no amount of hiding behind theory can rationalise the weakness that is self-induced through sheer lack of application arising out of indolence and a love of decadent pleasure. Theory may explain the causes of relative insincerity but the problem still remains as to how one may overcome it.

And the answer is simple --- diligence. Hard work overcomes apparently insurmountable obstacles; horrendous hurdles are scaled when the soul of man determines to do, to act, to dissolve the difficulties en route to the summit of success. Performance is the outcome of labour --- disciplined diligence, patient perseverance, daily dutifulness. Action is the key, not indolence.