It all depends on how you perceive things

Every person has his/her own view on every other topic under the sun and in most cases the views of no two persons are the same. But if you ask people their view on ‘politics or politicians’, more than 95% of them will be of the same opinion and that being “dirty politics”, “selfish people” and all such similar comments. Even my opinion was with the majority until a few months after which, I had to change not only my view but the way I perceived politics.

A couple of months ago, during a chat with my friends, the politics topic crept in and a heated discussion followed. I was of the opinion that no politician is a noble man. All what each politician does is make promises to people, come to power, earn crores of money and they do no good to the people who elected them. Even if they do any good, they magnify the things they did and not to forget, they never leave an opportunity to criticize the other politicians. And when I expressed these views, this is what one of my friends told me “when you can’t take time out of your routine and join politics to help the needy, how can you comment on others who are at least trying to do something. Even though the politicians are greedy, they at least do some good to the people. Where as what we do is just sit in our comfort zone and comment on them.” At that time I tried to disagree with that view but later on I realized it was the truth which not just me, but everyone doesn’t want to accept.

I do agree that as a citizen, we feel that the person we vote should be truthful, honest and work day-and-night to serve the people, but isn’t it too much to ask??? We want a person to sacrifice his personal life and strive to make the people in his constituency happy just because we gave him our vote, nothing more than that. We want ourselves in our life happily and expect them to make our lives better. I was of the opinion that politicians are selfish people, but after all the thinking I felt that I was the selfish person.

And then after a while, I saw Rang De Basanti, a wonderful movie with a message that to change the system, you need to be a part of it. All these made me change the way I looked at politics. Even if the present politicians add 500 crore to their pockets, they are at least doing service worth 50 crore. With this optimistic approach, I realize that all politicians are not as bad as I used to feel before. All said and done its all about how one perceives things.