In Naguib Mahfouz’s novel Children of the Alley, which I read recently for my freshman seminar, one of the main themes seems to be how easy it is for us to fall to misinterpretation and misguidance when we have the habit of venerating our leaders. Unfortunately, it seems to be human nature to praise and give an almost divine status to leaders with a strong character and good morals — it is almost a way for us to say that the example set by those leaders, though it is ideal to follow, cannot be practiced by the common man. All too often, I have heard people saying, “I am no Gandhi!” or “I am no Mother Teresa!” Why do we do this? What underlies our need to emphasize the good qualities of others just so that we can justify our own laziness or bad characteristics that we are unwilling to work towards?
In the novel, it seems that over and over again, the residents of the alley encounter a great soul capable of setting things right, and instead of imbibing that leader’s strong character, they put him on a pedestal and forget him right there. Instead of trying to improve themselves so that they too can be great, they content themselves with fighting, drinking, smoking hashish, stealing and other base activities, claiming that the examples of their great leaders are too difficult to follow.
And we are no different — in real life, we too claim, “I am no Gandhi!” or “I am no Mother Teresa!” Why do we say such things?? A core belief of Vedanta, as stated by Swami Vivekananda, is that “Each soul is potentially divine. The goal is to manifest this divinity within by controlling nature, external and internal. Do this either by work, or worship, or psychic control, or philosophy — by one or more, or all of these — and be free. This is the whole of religion.” For those who have read the story, it is interesting to see how Adham became truly free through his loyalty and pure love for his father Gabalawi; we saw that Rifaa’s strong efforts to destroy the evils within himself and within others through the means of psychic control led him to true happiness; by controlling their nature (the novel mentions several times how anger affected these men, but in the most crucial moments, they were able to exercise self-restraint), they were truly able to make a small difference in the alley. However, the problem is that average people have not realized that they too can be such leaders — we are all potentially divine; thus, by improving our own selves, we too can have Gabalawi’s strength, or Adham’s loyalty, or Gandhi’s truthfulness, or Mother Teresa’s compassion — and who knows, maybe one day in the future, people may be extolling our virtues! We need not venerate our idols as divine, because by doing so, we put their greatness out of our grasp. Instead, we need to look within and realize that we, too, are destined for greatness.
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