People, in general, seem to love predicting what will happen in the distant future. One often hears a lot of statements about what happens, or what will happen, to anything or anyone, eventually. Eventually, you will get a girl. Eventually, you will be happily employed. Eventually, India will become a superpower. Eventually the US will go to the dogs. Eventually there will be a war. Eventually, the bad guy will get punished. Eventually, that girl’s gonna get screwed. Many of such eventualities are comforting – that one would eventually gain employment; some of them give food for thought, intellectual junk – like about an eventual nuclear war. Some others aren’t really that palatable. But what is conveniently forgotten is this – all opinions of eventuality is in the face of some assumptions. However, there is no real reason why these assumptions should turn out to be true. Sure, I’ll get an employment somewhere. But, it is really my – or rather human – nature to expect something more. Of course I’ll be employed happily in some company. But really, is that what I want? Human desire in general is such that it is always a step ahead of your current abilities. That, in itself is good – without that we would not even have bothered to leave our neanderthal caves and invent the wheel. That is what is called as ‘drive’ as long as it doesn’t mutate into fanaticism, extreme expectations or desperation. But when such reasonable desires and expectations fail to get fulfilled, it is understandable that one gets dejected, and depressed. However, the last thing that the person would like to be reminded is that he or she would still get the most basic requirement of all those desires, one that can be taken as granted, as a given. He or she wouldn’t really want to know that, even though they did not get that job at Lucent Technologies, it is ok, you’ll get a job anyway. That, even though meant to be comforting, is like saying to the person that your desired too much, you cannot really go beyond your current abilities. Is that what the person would like to know? Is that what you want the person to realise? That eventually he’ll get something, but not in the way he desired, and not what he desired? This might seem really rude to the person who’s telling the words of comfort, but put yourself in the person’s shoes and see – you have your desires, the very fulfilment of which only can give you the joy you are looking for. And someone comes along and says that your desires will not be fulfilled because you do not qualify for such desires to be fulfiled, but something at your level will surely happen. Just how much of a comfort will it be? Eventuality is a vaguely defined term, something like the mathematical infinity. You can claim a lot of things can happen eventually – not everyone would care to verify that your claims are true. Also consider a similar case in Computer Science – the one of asymptotic analysis. This says that eventually, a program will run in some time, whether exponential or linear or something. How the program runs asymptotically is one thing. But it is a totally different thing when an algorithm is taking a second or more in a critical application. In such a case, saying that asymptotically it will run within five seconds doesn’t make any sense. Just similarly, saying to a person that he will eventually gets what he desires or something like that doesn’t make any sense – it does nothing to satisfy his desire, to soothe his ego, or to bolster his pride. The more worrying effect of this is for the person to slip into even more depression, or to do something totally out of the way, or abnormal, in the hope that the abnormality would distract people enough so that, in that small length of time, they may lick their proverbial wounded paws and proceed as if nothing ever happened. Sure, the latter is way better compared to the former, but it doesn’t really give any satisfation to the wounded. Worse, if the claims of eventual happiness are really taken seriously, the same desires can give rise to the same dejection, and this time, the probability of slipping into depression is even greater. Spurned emotions, belied expectations and unfulfiled desires can kill a man. It should be noted that this entire thought process is in the context of the everyday man – so claiming that satisfaction can be achieved through reducing desires cannot be applied here. Desires, as told before, are important. Only, excessive desire can be harmful, and should be avoided at all costs. Moreover, telling a man to reduce his desires when it is reasonable is only to remind him, in another way, albeit a bit cruelly, that he is not really capable of attaining what he expected out of himself, and that he should really lower his own bar. Both of them are not the best of soothing balms to an injured heart; one can lead either to more desire or abnormality, while other can lead to self pity – all of them not the best of conditions you’d want the affected to be in, if you are really thinking in the best of his or her interests. Instead, to the best of your abilities, try to explain to the affected, what are the real requirements to achieve the desire, and tell him or her, how to achieve the requirements first. Had they really known what are the real qualities required and how to go about achieving their desire, they wouldn’t be in such a situation in the first place, and they wouldn’t be coming to you for comfort and advice. What they need to know is not that they’ll be getting something that they know a priori that they’ll anyway get; they need to know how to go about getting what they desire. A concerned person is as much as interested in getting my desires fulfilled for my satisfaction, as I am in his or hers. That is why it is called concern – if he or she is not, I wouldn’t be going to him or her anyway. Also, the fact that one has really come to that person for advice signifies that they have missed something, and have done some sort of analysis as to what they have missed, and why they’ve missed it, came up with no answer, and have come to you with the hope that, since that person has already achieved what he or she desires, he or she will be able to answer the affected’s queries. And that’s what I believe, is the real expectation on the part of the affected from that person. Solace is not something that would remind a person that his desires and ambitions would not be fulfilled; it is rather a way to reorient and guide a disoriented soul.It is only natural that it would make more sense to reorient than confuse even more.
