STOCKHOLM REVISITED

A gang of bank robbers in Stockholm locked up a number of people in a vault in a typical hostage situation in the early nineteen seventies. After some days of brutality and utter despair, the hostages tended to show sympathy towards their captors when the latter’s behaviour became a little bit less vicious. At the end of an ordeal that lasted for about a week, the hostages turned almost in favour of the criminals and even spoke up for them when released, their motives and methods notwithstanding. The behaviour of people in high-stress situations losing their rational judgement at the smallest sign of respite was later termed the ‘Stockholm Syndrome’. It may be respite from despair, from pain, from fear, or from any other situation of hopelessness.

Hope is the key. Comforts and securities are all relative.

Sometimes we pamper ourselves with the luxury of feelings like self-pity, stress, fatigue, helplessness, panic, hate and hysteria. We blame God (or Nature or Destiny or just the world at large) for being unfair to us.

The situation may, of course, actually seem bad; crime, oppression, torture, a child’s illness, one’s own pain or insufficiency or handicap, hell on earth itself. And our subconscious belief in destiny prompts us to question, “Why me? What have I done to deserve this?”

For the answer, consider “Why not?”

If there has to be a measure of suffering in the world, why should it be meted out to someone else and not me? Why should that poor wretch be sleeping by the roadside and eating out of rubbish dumps while I drive past complaining of the heat or the traffic?

CONCEIT! Is that what makes me better than him!  I have convinced myself that I deserve better than him!

We take all the blessings and bounty for granted, and hanker for more. Have we ever thought that if we do get more, we could use it to ease someone else’s lot. It’s the same spirit as leaving one’s seat in the bus for someone older or weaker or more in need!

A mountain climber’s account many years ago said that when clinging to the rock-face halfway up, it was more encouraging to look back in awe at the climb already accomplished than to look upwards and despair at what remained still. In the same vein, it is better to give thanks for what we have than to complain about what we don’t.

Hope is the key. Hope elevated to the power of belief is faith. Faith, unquestioning in its gracefulness, is Love. Love is God.

Faith and love. People have endured cancers, cauldrons and crosses on the strength of Faith and Love, faith in love.

Love (verb).

Recommended reading: 

"The Story of the Four Candles" - J's Magic Galleries

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