That one extra mouthful, the one extra swig, the one lazy evening spent not exercising- all these, in one or the other individual, when pointed out, they retort back, Oh come on, nothing can happen! Meaning, dont chastise me, no harm can come to me by just this one infraction
of behaviour. Is it ever just one- does it ever stop after one act of ommission or commission? Experience confirms that it - the infraction- goes on and on, under the assumption that just a little infraction cannot harm!
Honestly, yours truly also has reacted and behaved like that: the unneeded piece of sweet, or cup of tea, or the avoided but needed spell of exercise, the one more(and completely unnecessary) video clip on the net all of these, and more.
It is the more ominous acts of ommissions or commisions that go to make a chain of harmful actions and habits that undo an individual: the one time tax evasion leading upto a large and sustained one, the one time unethical act forming into a habit of thievery, the one more indulgence in an unhealthy habit leading upto an irreversible and complex health condition.
All these are the result of the above mentioned attitude- arre kuch nahi hota hai, just let me do it. There is even a technical name to this attitude: short term hedonism. And its counterpoint is here: https://albertellis.org/yolo/
And then there are people who lead a straightforward -if boring- life, and they feel smug that they have none of the harmful habits, and expectedly, they look forward to a peaceful long life. They are convinced that they have done no wrong and thus have absolved themselves of all blame with regard to not ever having done the wrong thing.
And then one day the world comes crashing on the straightforward one. And they wonder what wrong they did. It needs no special ability to know that the world does come crashing on the people that did the wrong things as well, and it comes crashing sooner rather than
later.
So what happened? Why did the virtuous ones get a whole lot of trouble when they did not do anything wrong? Where did they miss out? What did they miss out? We are not even talking of the karma-theory here, though that may operate. The focus of our topic here is different.
The focus here is this: even the most virtuous ones amongst us have -will have- at least one area of behaviour where he or she absolves himself or herself of any wrong doing- and this is a blind spot. One does not know that he or she is harming oneself. The background attitude-
arre kuch nahi hota hai-, hidden from awareness , is at work. The straightforward one may not steal- never ever- but he may also not ever exercise, to give an example. And the exalted
one may fall into an irreversible and disabling health condition. What wrong did I do, the vitruous may ask, and really he could have done no harm and yet the world comes crashing in on him. The only mistake he may have made would be this: arre (by not doing -----, ) kuch
nahi hota hai! That mistake of assuming that by a small infraction of not doing the right thing on a sustained basis, he could still escape the accumulated effects of not having acted when he should have- that- is the undoing.
What is my area of nondoing, the non performance of something that would one day lead to my undoing?
