The common thread

Last few days, I have been away traveling, meeting with some friends who are engaged in health care networks in various parts of the globe. As I listened to stories from each of their own contexts, the challenges which they are grappling with, a common thread emerged. Whether it is in the context of rural north India where we work (the various stories which I had shared earlier) or the story of the 75 year old absolutely healthy nurse in UK who decided to go to Switzerland to have a physician help her to end her life, the “Gay marriage debates” all over the world, or the climate change and protection of the universe, all is about, “identity” and “rights”.

When I was born, I was born with an identity, of being part of the family, the nation, the tribe and the universe I am part of. But the next few years of living in this world, I was told, that though I do have an identity, that is where you start, but I have to earn the rest of it and protect my rights which come along with this identity which I am continuing to earn. And life becomes all about, earning our identity, protecting it and fighting for the rights that we feel come along with the same. Whether it is an individual protecting his or her earned or chosen identity and associated rights by the way he or she behaves, family members protecting the honor of their family by deciding not to care for a girl who had tried to commit suicide, a Nation which tries to promote itself in the global scenario, or the climate change activists crying to save the planet, it all boils down to this common thread. All are not bad, and in some situations, fights for identity and rights are for good causes and reasons.

But the problem is, all these preserving and protecting the identity which we have earned, or have been part of by choice or chance, it all becomes about me, my family, my nation and my universe! It has all become about me and my rights either as individuals or the corporate rights of the group I am part of. Which means, what I want or what my group wants has been enthroned as the center of the lives we live. But we forget that when we enthrone me and my rights, whether individual or corporate, we are dethroning something else or someone else. There was someone already on the throne, which either we did not realize or decided to dethrone intentionally.

In addition to dethroning and enthroning, there is also the issue of denying a greater identity for the sake of a lesser identity. There is a bestowed identity the “imago dei” which we do not know about or decided to give up for an identity which we think is greater than this. We have forgotten the fact - “what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them? You have made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honor,” the bestowed identity of human race as the crux of creation. But none of these are earned, but given, bestowed by someone who was greater and bigger than me, my family, my nation or my universe, rather the creator of these.

What would it take to re-enthrone the rightful king as the center of our universe? What would it take to re-capture the greater bestowed identity which we have given up for a lesser one? Whether in rural north India, or West or East, or any other part of the world, end of the day the common threads which need to be re-established are the same, re-enthroning and recapturing what has been lost….