Once upon a time, there was a powerful person with a great
responsibility. His goal was to achieve world peace, however unrealistic it
sounded, he was fully determined and committed to it. He was so obsessed with
this goal that it has become his purpose and meaning of his entire existence.
World Peace! what a noble obsession, everyone thought.

But the person knew the difficulties to achieve it. A
complete, sustainable, and everlasting peace between all nations, races,
religions, castes, creeds, genders and species of the world. He had to slowly
get everyone on his side to move ahead with him, in the same direction. So, he
started taking actions that would convince him of progress and that would
convince others to believe in him. The more successful he became in this
endeavor, the more people followed him. There were so many people,
organizations, societies, communities, and also some governments started
supporting him on everything he did. Claps and accolades from every corner of
the world.

But, there were also some people who did not agree with his
ways. He just could not believe it. How could people not agree for world peace?
Who doesn’t want peace? It’s unbelievable, he thought. But he was determined to
do whatever it takes to achieve peace. He and his powerful friends started
eliminating anyone who stands in between them and their goal. People were shamed,
humiliated, imprisoned, kidnapped, tortured, murdered, raped, bribed, and so
on. The more violent and tyrannical his actions were and the more suppressing
and oppressing his methods were, rebellion started losing steam. As his support
grew in strength, he succeeded in eliminating the opposition in tens, hundreds,
thousands and now totaling a few million people. People were reminded that his
intentions were the noblest of all; only his methods were questionable but
necessary. Although it seemed like there is no opposition anymore, there was uncertainty
in the air and a hope of a miraculously sudden uprising of a rebellious
revolution from some corner. But, the chances were almost equal to none; those
were the times.

After 15 years of dreaming of world peace, he finally succeeded
in bringing peace to at least half of the world. Rest of the world was
remaining to be conquered and made peace with. Peace was achieved out of fear,
anger, agony, loss, death, and hopelessness for a lot of people. And those people
who truly believed in his vision and methods were celebrating and everyone else
were pretending to celebrate, fearing that they would be labeled as traitors and
executed otherwise. The man was then honored as the first citizen and was
called as ‘The Greatest Citizen’. He was the model citizen for everyone.

Everyone desired and dreamed of becoming as great as him. The
society, community, governments and nations were doing everything to be as great
as possible. Greatness is awarded, rewarded, and recommended. No one wanted to
be normal or basic. Being basic and mediocre invited ridicule and social
castration. Even though there was peace and no more violence and bloodshed,
people found ways of punishing and discriminating each other.

One has to go above and beyond one’s potential, exceed the
expectations consistently and achieve extraordinary results. One has to be a role
model and anything less than that is just normal. No matter what you do and how
you do it, it doesn’t matter as long as your intentions are noble and your goal
is world peace. Entire society was results oriented. Results! That is all that
mattered. No one cared for consequences.

I was curious, so, I asked a citizen.

What about it? a young person grumbled. Who cares what the
consequences were! And as everyone knows, no human can ever really know all the
consequences any way. So why bother? It’s too complicated to understand,
analyze, track, and measure consequences;  it’s humanly impossible. You know that there
is someone up in the sky to do exactly that, don’t you? Keeping a track of
consequences is His job, not ours. Who’s got time for that nonsense? I’d rather
spend quality time in becoming great. I’d rather walk in the footsteps of The
Greatest Citizen and make it my life’s purpose. You must be insane to think
about the consequences…you are just wasting your life. How dare you think of
consequences instead of results? Our entire society is results oriented. Our
parents, teachers, employers, shareholders, politicians, scientists, artists,
and every single person is results oriented. Just by hearing the word ‘consequences’
irritates me to the core. You have disturbed my peace by asking that question.
Are you from the other side of the world? You must be from the underground
rebellion… you must be our enemy. You don’t belong here, you traitor!

Citizens! Citizens! He called few more people and quickly
told them about my question and immediately everyone’s faces turned red in
anger and disgust. They slowly moved towards me forming a circle, and I was
totally surrounded. First they yelled and abused me and then they started
throwing things at me. The mob got bigger and my screams got louder. I finally
got tired and there was no more energy left to even breathe. Then something
heavy fell on my head, everything went black and I died.

When The Greatest Citizen heard about the incident of my
death, he was extremely proud of his people and applauded the for following the
path of world peace. He made a rule that the word ‘consequences’ be deleted
from all languages and people are forbidden to use it. Eventually everyone
forgot what it means.

Peace prevailed.

Greatness prevailed.

There were no more consequences.

————————The
End————————–