In last two months, we witnessed a lot of snow in Kabul. This snow was accompanied by frost and cold. Few days were so cold that one did not like to do anything and wanted to sit in room, in front of the heater. Days were short and dark while nights were long and cold. When a person continually lived in the same situation, he gradually developed an irritation and thus got short-tempered. This is one of the negative aspects of weather. Extreme hot weather may not have such effects on a person except that one might get a bit weak but one can feel better in the serene weather of nights. But people who live in very cold areas of the world have experienced this bad feeling that continuous frost of winter makes their mind numb and thus they feel their senses and emotions being frozen by the cold weather. Such a situation may be very difficult to be imagined by the inhabitants of hot areas but the inhabitants of cold areas truly know and experience this fact about the cruelty of winter. But it is also difficult to be imagined by a person who sits in a hot room and is profoundly supplied with edibles and other necessities of life.
It is said that such a cold weather shrinks your feelings and emotions, makes you feel disappointed and deprive you of all the hope. In such a condition, a person who is depressed from his sufferings may come to commit suicide. Anyhow, it is another issue that we must not leave our loved ones alone in such a condition. It is on the record that majority of the suicides (not the present day suicides in which a person aims to kill many others) were committed in such circumstances and there was a great role of weather in these tragedies.
When we read the novels of great Russian writers like Tolstoy, Chekhov, Dostoevsky, Nikolai Gogol, Turgenev, Pushkin, Gorki and others, there are a number of novels and short stories that portray a moving picture of the sufferings of life and in all these masterpieces, the impact of novel or story is strengthened by the description of the harsh cold weather. As Russia is among the countries that experience the harsh winter so these stories were very successful in depicting the true picture with the descriptions of weather.
Anyhow, as these writers always spoke in favor of common people and criticized the government so Tsars (The royal family that ruled Russia for a number of centuries) and following Communist government were never happy of them. They wrote masterpieces that brought for them the miseries and punishments. As punishment, they were sent to the cold region of Siberia. The Siberia is a distant frozen land in Russia where cold weather makes life very difficult and harsh. These writers, who owned soft hearts and fragile feelings, suffered a lot in this punishment; both physically and emotionally. They were deprived of even small basic things like pen, paper and books but in fact, these things meant a lot for them as they were their only mean of catharsis and self expression.
The above detail was meant to beam our attention towards a fact that there are many good things in life that may not be having much meaning to us in routine but when we are deprived of them, we come to discover the true worth of them. This is especially true for the good behaviors and people who live with us with such comforting behaviors. No doubt, we like such behaviors and we admire the people who own them but their true worth is realized when we face a situation when such people are not found and when such behaviors are not expressed. A friend of mine used to work with some foreigners and luckily he had got access to work with some of the most polite and sober officers of the firm. They were all very polite and well-behaving and he loved his work because of the company of these decent people. Later on, the firm finished its project and it was wound up and everyone working in it lost his job. The foreigners returned to their countries while the locals started looking for jobs.
The friend of mine got a job in a local exporting firm. Though he had got a better job with better salary but soon he came to me with a sad face. On my inquiry, he told that his new bosses had strange habits of shouting, talking, dictating and other stupid actions that irritated him a lot. He had a habit of silently working on computer but one of his bosses had the habit of playing songs loudly on his mobile phone. He was greatly disturbed by this but he could do nothing for that. They were also in habit of shouting and calling their servants and at times, it seemed truly awkward. He said, ‘Now I realized how much lucky I was working with such decent people because with them, I spent a number of years in no time and with these ill-mannered people, every second passes like an hour and I keep looking at my watch so that I should run away from them in the earliest’.
God forbidden, you might have also witnessed one of the worst forms of bad behavior in the houses, among the relatives. Many years ago, I witnessed a person who used to be short-tempered and his every style and action annoyed the people around him. The way of his talking, walking, eating and doing small works disturbed the people around him and thus they tried their best to avoid him and keep away from him. He was just like a poisonous snake the people tried to remain at a distance. Every moment passed with him was disgusting and painful. It looked as if the person had the ability to suffocate others by his improper behavior.
This fact is true for the students of schools and universities. There are polite and well-behaving students who make both the teachers and their classmates feel good with their ideal behaviors. They are given due importance both by their fellows and teachers. There are also present those who have such disgusting behaviors and ill-manners that they suffocate the people around them with their mere presence.
It is strange that good behaviors of ten good students are not much felt while the awkward behavior of a single student makes everyone feel bad about it. This situation depicts a reality that presence of good behaviors may not be felt but their absence really creates a lot of problems to the people around them.
It is strange why some people become so senseless about the feelings of others and fail to realize that their behaviors are creating a number of mental stress and irritation for the people around them. When we are getting disturbed of such behaviors, it falls as a responsibility on our shoulders to promote good behaviors; by starting from our own and then working to create such an environment around us.