The girl sitting at the temple looked upset because she was feeling the pressure of her conscience on her thoughts. No matter how hard she tried, she could not ignore the constant nagging of her conscience. A French pastor John Calvin quoted that ‘The Torture of a bad Conscience is the Hell of a Living Soul’ and she can completely relate to this as she can feel the hell herself. She could feel the turmoil in her head where all the thoughts from the incident were revolving around the core of her mind. The thoughts were a combination of the things she could have said to prove her points or not have said to ease the tortured pain later.
She can still see the hurt and disgrace in her parents eyes when she told them those brusque things about them being selfish and not letting her live her life. Those were not the only things she said, infact she cannot remember the exact words which caught fire through her anger at that time and now lay like ashes in front of her, even more black than usual. This all happened just because her parents refused to let her take the camp at the National Park because it was not safe for her. The employees at the National Park department were careless enough to let the wildlife wander in the area of human camp residency which has been in the top five news for months. She knew that from the beginning but the extremity of the fact that she has turned eighteen and can live her life on her own terms forced her to make a fool of herself by disrespecting her parent’s decisions. She was culpable about her behavior but she could not find a way to unshackle it by being sagacious.
She was now looking for options to avoid the topic completely but then the saying from Indian protagonist Mahatma Gandhi transpired in her mind which stated that ‘There is a higher Court than Court of Justice and that is the Court of Conscience. It Supersedes all the other Courts.’ She banged her hands in frustration on the bench she was sitting. She cannot avoid the topic was for sure because of her active conscience.
She cannot ignore her conscience even if she tried to because it attributes to moral values which are incorporated in an individual from birth till they die. The actual meaning of conscience is to introspect oneself and make oneself aware of the good or evil things performed by oneself. Religiously, it could be defined as ‘God’s Voice’ or ‘Inner Voice’. The knowledge and respect of oneself could only be achieved by listening to your conscience and respecting the decisions of your moral values. If she ignored it then it would mean that her childhood had no purpose as she cannot support her own conscience which has been growing up with her. Also, it would notch up a level of disrespect for her parents, teachers and all the other elders who had contributed towards her mental growth in the past eighteen year. She was stubborn and wanted to be independent but not to an extent where she loses her conscience in the process. Infact, she would need her conscience even more to make decisions when she would be independent enough to support herself.
She has to learn to use it as a positive thing because conscience can also act as a motivational force to encourage oneself or to do some work as sense of duty. She has to take it as both, get motivated from it enough to distinguish between good or bad and make it her duty to follow all the good indications. The motivation has definitely given her a path and to trigger her sense of duty she has no other option but to apologize for behaving like a brat. This would also mean that she supports the quote from an American writer Richard Bach which says, ‘Your Conscience is the Measure of the honesty of your Selfishness. Listen to it Carefully.’ She is happy that atleast she is not selfish and was proud that she has given herself this time to think and come up with a perfect answer to her problems.
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