'A friend in need is a friend indeed' is a much heard and referred adage. In practical life, we are least interested to become one of that kind and we also have great difficulty to identify either a friend or a neighbor. We think of an acid test to prove their worth, before actually using them. Once, Jesus was asked to define a neighbour. The parable of the Good Samaritan which He told his disciples is known all over the world. The low caste Samaritan, who while on a journey saw a wounded man left helpless, took no time to lift him to the nearest Inn. The parable says that two other dignitaries had already passed the road, leaving this looted merchant as such. The contradiction is that everybody wants love at agape level, nobody but thinks that letting out the same is the only way to invite more of that kind.
I remember a live story from the World War - I front. A soldier saw his lifelong friend fall in battle. Caught in a trench with continuous gunfire whizzing over his head, the soldier asked his lieutenant if he might go out into the “no man’s land” between the trenches to bring his fallen comrade back. “You can go,” said the lieutenant, “but I don’t think it will be worth it. Your friend is probably dead and you may throw your life away.” The lieutenant’s advice didn’t matter, and the soldier went anyway. Miraculously he managed to reach his friend, hoist him onto his shoulder and bring him back to their company’s trench. As the two of them tumbled in together to the bottom of the trench, the officer checked the wounded soldier, and then looked kindly at his friend. “I told you it wouldn’t be worth it,” he said. “Your friend is dead and you are mortally wounded.” “It was worth it, though, sir,” said the soldier. “What do you mean; worth it?” responded the Lieutenant. “Your friend is dead.” “Yes, Sir” the private answered. “But it was worth it because when I got to him, he was still alive and I had the satisfaction of hearing him saying, “Jim…, I knew you’d come.”
Jim knew the power and value of love. Let us assume that he even knew that nobody on earth exists without any trace of love, up or down. Love is the most misinterpreted word in any language. Deepak Chopra has said that today, ‘I love you’ only means ‘I trade you’. I firmly believe that it is the fundamental energy from which everything we experience emerged. Love never pollutes anything; there is not a place where it won’t fit. Love needs only little energy but yields enormous results, it invigorates your happiness and elevates your self-esteem; it is the perfect drug that heals off all disorders. Today we have oxygen parlours in metros; tomorrow we will have love parlours even in villages, where loving words will be spoken on pay. We are always busy with multitudes of things forcing time and space to shrink further and further every time. I think that a busy world of netizens deserves neither a good friend nor a good neighbour. We have rules to govern, prisons to sleep and discourses to thrill but not examples that out spell. In our anxiety to be individually perfect, we hesitate to experience the present. What would be the fate of the world, if it is filled with lives that hesitate to offer oneself for another’s welfare?
