By Robert Clements
A Cleanliness Drive of Ourselves…!
“Our greatest ability as humans is not to change the world, but change ourselves,” …… Mahatma Gandhi.
And as the nation went on a cleaning spree on Gandhiji’s birthday, with most everyone taking a broom and sweeping beaches, grounds, and everywhere where the lens of the camera could reach, I imagined I saw a small man with horn rimmed glasses, covered with just a khadi cloth, watching everybody, “Looks like a cleanliness drive on my birthday,” he said.
“Yes,” I said, as I watched a road filled with garbage being broomed, and immediately housewives emptying more garbage on the same spot just cleaned, “Yes, we are trying to clean the nation!”
“It’s not working,” said the birthday celebrant, as a scooterist dumped his household garbage on the same road and sped away.
“It’s a symbolic act!” I said in defence.
“A meaningless one, unless you clean the right spot!” said the Father of the Nation emphatically to me.
“Right spot?” I asked, looking at brooms, brushes, garbage cleaners and also the ones, dirtying the places, “What right spot sir?”
“The spot within yourself,” said the Mahatma patiently, “because what you people are trying with a broom and brush is to change the outside world, whereas what you need to change is the muck that resides inside you!”
“You once said,” I said, “That our greatest ability as humans is,”
“Yes, yes,” I know what I once said,” said the great Mahatma, “But let me put it even better, in context with this great cleaning spree the nation is doing.”
“Yes,” I said, pulling out a pen and paper.
“Our greatest ability as humans is not to clean or broom the country, but to start cleaning ourselves!”
I wrote the great words down, as the birthday boy continued, “When we clean our hearts and minds, when we can make our violent minds non-violent…”
“Like you taught the nation and the world and got our freedom,” I interrupted eagerly,
“Yes,” said the Mahatma simply, “When we can change ourselves inwardly, from playing politics with people’s lives, from using the way a man worships God to make him or her the focus of hate, when we can be at peace within ourselves, and stop creating division between citizens, then and then only should we take broom and brush and start doing these ‘outside ourselves’ activities!”Yes dear reader, mine, may be a fictitious conversation, but the words are not those from my imagination, but those the Father of the Nation actually uttered. Even as we do these symbolic acts of broom and hugs, let’s first begin purging the hate and anger inside ourselves, so that the brooming and hugging spring out from our ‘greatest ability’ as Gandhiji said, to change ourselves’!
Let me move from cleaning the country’s mess to that of cleaning our own individual messy backyards, or our own lives:
A few years ago, I was speaking with a lawyer, who told me his young son wanted to get into a career in singing. “I have spent thousands putting him through law college,” he cried, “And now this is what he wants to do Bob?” I looked at the lawyer, quietly took him to a coffee shop, and reasoned with him, telling him that he had worked hard so his children could make choices in what they wanted to do. The lawyer seemed quite convinced with my clever arguments, and then just as we were about to part he asked me, “How’s your daughter doing?”
“She’s doing well,” I said, “Though she seems to spend more time learning to dance than study!”
“Then why don’t you allow her to choose?” said the lawyer, and slowly, very slowly I nodded my head.
I had just lost to him, because without cleaning my own backyard, I was advising him to clean his.
Many of us do this every day.
A president to be, of a social club, I know, talked big of projects worth crores which he could help finance and get started, till somebody asked him, about the club’s own little project of cleaning a garbage dump, “We are finding it difficult to raise money to pay the sweeper!” he said.
How easy it is to talk about cleaning the whole city, and raising money for dream projects when you were not putting effort in your own backyard!
And this trend is in all our lives.
A preacher, I know very well, whose sermons I used to think were some of the best I’d heard, screamed one day from the pulpit about forgiveness. Many in his congregation were impressed by his sermon, “How’s your brother?” somebody asked him, and then watched him put his eyes down.
He, and his brother were not on talking terms and the preacher had never had the compulsion to pick up the phone and make amends, though he could preach on the subject!
How is your backyard?
Are you telling others how to clean theirs?
An uncle of mine I remember was quite good at advising all his relatives not to stand in the way of their children and who they wanted to marry. Then one day, his son decided to get married to a girl of his own choosing. “No!” shouted his father, the same amicable uncle, “You will not marry her!”
Again, a dirty backyard.
What’s the dirt lying in your backyard about? You know better than I, so get the mop out now, and get the cleaning done!
Clean it, and people seeing your own backyard clean, will clean theirs too, even before you tell them to!
The most powerful piece of advice you can show others is a clean backyard!
How well Gandhiji knew people, how well he understood that to change people, one needed to first change oneself, and yet we have leaders in our nation who wax eloquent and also spend photo-op time showing how they are cleaning everything other than themselves. Maybe what they and we need is a giant mirror that reflects our messy insides and shows us that we first need to change ourselves before we try to change the world…!
(The Author conducts an Online Writers and Speakers Course. For more details send a thumbs-up to him on WhatsApp 9892572883. [email protected])