Freedom
Frequently politician and citizens both talk a lot about freedom. Freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom to decide about self and so on.
Today I want to talk about freedom of religion. One thing now I know for sure is that there is lot of difference between freedom to worship God and freedom to follow a religion.So, many times I wonder by giving everybody right to exercise right to follow one's religion gives the right to other to criticize other's way or worshipping or other's religion.
What does it mean when somebody comes and tells you that your religion is not good enough so convert to our religion and we will pay you money for that or beat you up if you don't. This what goes on many places in developing nations. Many self acclaimed religious leaders lure people by showing them money, food or fear to convert to one's religion and saying that your way of worship is not right.
In my view thats when somebodies right to follow his/her religion is ceased.
Basic understanding of a free society should be not to ask anybody to convert their religion. Now there difference between asking somebody to to convert and to tell what a religion says and follow. For example, somebody telling about what bible says and what it means is different from saying convert to christianity and abonden your religion.
A society where degrading another religion by insulting or presenting it in a way followers do not follow takes away freedom of excercising one's religion or faith.
So don't ask another person to convert, ask him/her to follow what his/her religion to an extend where moral rules of society are not broken and then we all will really have freedom of religion/faith.
Have we met before?
Last year we moved to California from Texas. To setup our new home we used to go to Walmart, Target and many other retail stores. Being new to the area I smiled at most of the people who looked at me and found two totally different type of response. On one side most of the people specially from Indian origin didn't return smile back and on the other side many other people from Indian origin were too eager to become our friends and asked our phone number.
With in few days I found that most of the people who took my phone number were not interested in friendship but were interested in side business and wanted to help me with that. At first I thought may be the guy is coming up with some nice project for developing a software to work part time. But then everybody had just one thing common the business is in partnership with fortune 500 companies and were only willing to give more information once we meet.
Unfortunately I agreed to meet one person and found that person marketing me best way of making money by making members of Quixtar (more famous as Amway). After patiently listening to the person and respectfully declining the offer the person totally changed in behaviour and just left without even saying bye.
Then I started noticing and found that "Have we met before?", this is one of the punch lines used by Amway and Quixtar sellers. You will find them very often in Walmart, Big Lots, Fry's and many other places you go for shopping.
And these people are the reason of other people not talking to each other or returning smiles as they are afraid to be caught by Quixtar member.
I many times thought of making a T-Shirt with wording, "I am not Quixtar/Amway member!".
I really miss smile of those nice people who are not Quixtar members. I hope some day people here will start smiling at each other just for no reason.
Believe me Smile take lots of pains away.
