Idealism v/s pragmatism
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Am I practical?? Or am I idealistic?? This is a question that has been bothering me for quite some time now. Idealism! It’s like listening to your innate feelings…the way your mind’s wired to think under no external pressures. Being totally idealistic is something which is totally impractical. And being totally practical is like killing all your ideals right royally and allowing calculative thinking to take over your mind! Which one of the above two is better?? Being idealistic or being pragmatic?? I am still figuring out the answer…and I have all the time in the world to figure it out!
Does idealism always try to contradict pragmatism?? Do they always take opposite ways? And don’t they meet at some point or the other?? Well…if I knew the answer, I wouldn’t be writing this article at the first place! I have quite a few ideals in my life. And I always try to run behind them! Nothing’s more important to me than doing what my ideals say is right. But there’s this bugger called as life!! It is always up against you and your ideals. I have experienced this quite a lot of times.
Circumstances or situations or call it whatever, it always provokes you to take the easy way out. And more often than not, I have indeed succumbed to it. Most of you would have gone through the same thing and I presume that you’ll agree with me on this. You feel sick, disgusted, out of your mind, to go against your ideals. But you aren’t often left with a choice, are u??
When this topic came up in my class, my teacher gave us a simple n effective example. Assume you are an idealistic person and you don’t want yourself to be a part of heinous activities. You go to a government office. And you want to get something done. Bribery is the order of the day in most of the government offices. You can’t stand the fact that you can never get your work done without making your hands dirty. You feel like bombing the office and again your ideals intervene and put a full stop to this stray thought in your mind. What can you possibly do now?? Just forget about the work and move on?? What if it’s something pretty necessary? Say it’s your pension and you need to get it in order to lead an independent life. To take care of your family. Will you let your family die?? Will you let your own ideals to kill them?? You wouldn’t…
Situations often compel you to take impulsive actions. These actions seem to be a realistic answer to the current crisis. You just become a realist. An idealist believes the short run doesn’t count. A cynic believes long run doesn’t matter. A realist is the one who believes that what is done or left undone in the short run determines the long run.
Killing your ideals is the only way out of it?? If not, what is the other way?? Has breaking the ideals become so routine that they have lost their values? Does an idealistic person make a complete fool of himself in front of others?? Can people really stay idealistic, no matter what the circumstances are?? If not, what is the point of having ideals??
These were the questions that I badly wanted an answer for. And through my past experiences, I have learnt that being too idealistic can land you in trouble… in more ways than one. My ideals have now been ideally buried deep inside…not all…but most of them…some are resting in my mind…and some sleeping in my personal diary… n some actually have vanished…don’t know where… may be lost in the sands of time. I pity them because they couldn’t make it big out here. I pity them as they don’t have the courage to fight situations. I feel sad as they often cant answer many a questions that arise in front of it.
I have turned myself as a realist now. I don’t know whether its good or bad for me. But I did realize one thing. Idealism is fine…but as it approaches reality, the costs become prohibitive.
