It is a strange combination but one’s life resolves around the two so much that it needs to be given a thought on. Sometimes they in unison and sometimes they are conflict. But what are these desires and responsibilities and why is it that life can resolve just around them.

Lets see what responsibilities are, yes I know desires are great to talk about but life is about accepting both, so starting with the harder part first. Responsibilities are what life expects from you. Your responsibility to one’s own self, making sure you are healthy physically and mentally, learning, growing while striving towards ones own potential. This is may seem like a desire but no, this is a responsibility where one has to take care of one’s own self with one’s own actions. Any action that requires some one else to act on it, is a desire not a responsibility. Then responsibility towards one’s loved ones, people who are in the circle of myself around you namely your life partner, child, parents with few chosen relatives and friends.The key to this responsibility is to help them in fulfilling their own responsibilities to themselves. Love, spending time, taking care and all that is fine, but the key is to help them, let them know you are there and they are not alone in facing the life responsibilities. Lastly the responsibilities towards the external world, managing finances, bills, office, school, university everything that makes one’s life an active contributor to society one is living in. This is routine and regime of life, one has to stay responsible and not to fall off the cliff.

Oh, that sounds a lot, where does that leave any room for desires. Dictionary meaning of Desire are A wish or longing; The object of longing; Sexual appetite; passion. Desires is essential on ones own well being and do not follow the circles of life. Desires are personal and your own, indulgences you want, guilt free satisfaction you need, all of it. Desires evoke passion and longing and once fulfilled a satisfaction and achievement. They aim for a similar result as one’s responsibilities to oneself, but reasons are different. You may go to gym because you have to be responsible for your health or you may go to gym because you desire to look good. Different reasons, similar result.

That brings out the paradox of life, when desires and responsibilities are striving for your time and effort, the limiting factor. Through out your life, I believe you will sway between these constantly, in fact the phases in life, in a life year, in a month, in a week, in a day and in fact in an hour also, when one is focused on responsibilities and when one is indulging in the desires. Yes, I know even within an hour, I call that swaying between being Innocent and acting Mature.

Innocence is great, one can live the world being at peace of not knowing, desiring and then fulfilling. Children are like that mostly, though parents strive for them to become responsible. But even adults are like, why do you think, we have so much addiction of all kinds, simply desires let loose and shell of innocence never opened. Maturity requires recognizing the responsibilities, understanding the need to focus and work towards them. By acting mature, you can focus on reaching your own personal potential, acting towards responsibilities to your own self, love and care for the people dearest to you and fulfilling the duties of being a social animal. Adults are like that mostly, though children want their parents to become innocent and discover the wonders of the world with them. But then there are those Adults who get too engrossed in to these responsibilities and duties, that innocence is lost and never regained. Going through live as if living in a box. (Hrithik said that to Katrina in ZNMD). ZNMD is in essence is about this paradox of being innocent and having the wonderment towards life in contrast to acting mature and fulfilling the obligations of society.

Though ZNMD may sway a little towards innocence, but the key to happiness is having a balance. Let me give an example, it may sound trivial but that’s what life is about being innocent and acting mature even within an hour. Last night everything was hectic, finally when dinner was done, I could sit and watch a movie to un-wind, “Shall we dance“, sipping wine and enjoying Richard Gere’s predicament of desiring while being responsible. Even with dishes to clean and kitchen to swipe, first 30 minutes of an hour was spent watching the movie, that was my desire to put leg up and unwind. But then movie was paused and last 30 minutes of the hour was spent cleaning as it had to be done before 10:00. Finally ending the night with water in the eye, on seeing the guilt Richard Gere had on indulging in his desire of dancing. He could not face his wife and the fact that he was not happy sometimes with his life and this was his escape. That scene when he admits it, was a tearjerker for me. Then there is DevD, which challenged how far and how long one can stay innocent, and Kalki making Abhay Deol realize the need to get responsible not for others but for yourself.

Two movies made in different points in time talk about not getting to caught up in acting mature and rediscovering the wonder of being innocent to keep the sanity. Another movie showing the depths of indulgence one can get to in letting desires loose and the part of being innocent, and at the end acknowledging the potential of one’s life to start acting mature again to keep the sanity.

Sometimes it may be difficult to judge, what is a responsibility and what is a desire. Is writing my desire or my responsibility to myself to be creative. It may start with a desire, but as I wrote about the Question one has to get responsible and write every day judiciously to see something fruitful. Once you start doing that, does it stay desirable anymore, may be not. Have I figured this all out and balanced my life. No definitely not, I go over a cliff when my desires to create and responsibilities to myself make me forget the duties of everyday life. There is no correct answer, only one’s own method to manage this paradox, after all sanity is definitely NOT statistical. That’s what life is all about and what makes it worth living.