(this article originally appeared on the blog 'Lord of the Flies')
Life is a perpetual struggle, as it should be, forcing thermodynamics to its limit.
One way to put up the milestones might be your achievements. Or it might even be your failures. Or it might be all the things you let go. Or it might be all the people you have ever loved. Or it might be all those things that you lost. Or it might be all the fairies you have believed in. Or it might even be all the fairies you stopped believing in. Or it might be the behavioral walls you built around yourself, to protect, to become immune.
We are all born with soft, delicate baby skin, but this world is not a place for that. Our skin hardens and obtains the right complexion and toughness that is required to survive in our environment. It is a natural process. We gather antibodies only after suffering from the disease and surviving. In most cases, isolation is not the solution because if it takes the form of a delayed onset, it harms more than it helps.
Over time, you become immune to everything. You become immune to bullies at school. You become immune to your parents’ negligence. You become immune to the unavailability of your brother. You become immune to the rude remarks of your sister. You become immune to the selfishness of your friends. You become immune to getting bad grades. You become immune to the prejudices of your professors. You become immune to rebuke by your employer. You become immune to the plight of the beggar on the street. You become immune to the sensitivity of your companion. You become immune to the emotions of your friend. You become immune to the dejected faces of people whom you disappointed. You also become immune to chicken pox and influenza.
Being so immune is good. No one can hurt you, because no one can reach you. And in the meantime you can coldly play your cards and climb the socioeconomic ladder.
But as we build this strong fort around ourselves for our protection, it must not become a labyrinth for our souls where we get lost. Yet it often does. The fort becomes more real than its occupant.
We start by building baby forts. But when we are babies they look really big. We learn to gulp down a few things by getting used to them, or by using some form of "rationality". The highest of all walls we built around our ego, because we know that it has to be protected at all costs, because we know that any harm to it will shatter our confidence to fight, to live and to love. We always protect it, no matter what.
To counter the risk of another person shattering our confidence, we just HAVE to believe that the person is a fool, and we are sucking up to him/her for OUR benefit and nothing else. But how can you ever respect a person if you have to wear armor whenever you have to face him/her?
In the desperate attempt to protect ourselves, we shut out the reality we do not want to believe. We refuse to accept our own vulnerability. That might make us feel brave and give us some degree of satisfaction. In fact, it might be a great strategy to buckle up and move on. But to what extent? You lose track... is this person really you, is this really what you wanted?
People vilify things they once loved because it hurts them to believe otherwise.
Those battles we had fought in our childhood, fading away like a dream now, look like mere skirmishes. It was easy to stay immune to the world outside your home then, because there was some "apparent" self-sufficiency because your family was taking care of all your needs. Now it’s like you all have been thrown into a pile of candies and you get how much you take. You have to fight and the ugly face of survival appears. This is reality. It can get ugly.
All the morals, sensitive thinking, reflection -all that held meaning, is just plain lost because you can see that it is not only taking you anywhere but they were empty casks that held nothing at all, no "real" value, nothing to face the reality. They can shade you from the sun for some time, but when you realize that you have got nothing left in spite of being so true to yourself, you realize it was your mistake to believe that people get what they deserve. And seriously, is not that the most illogical thing? Of course, people get what they take - it is so plain and simple.
It hurts to fight and play dirty games to get something you love, because that is not how you romanticize. You want your lover to stay with you and love you back; you don’t want to have to fight with others to keep him/her. And so it goes with any work that you love, because you think it is yours. That is why competition hurts. Because you have to ‘prove’ that you are good- all the time. And you have to fight, even with those people who do not even "love" that work but they just want to be there for the bucks. And then you realize they are not even wrong. That is how things are and that is how they will always be.
When you were out of the system, you never cared about it, so you never criticized the system, because there was nothing wrong with it and it seemed good, it is just that YOU were not interested. But then you were forced to fight for your living. So you stepped in and you immediately started getting scathed. Although you played by the rules, you started seeing the imperfections and the loopholes and you started feeling disgusted and hating the system like never before. Maybe, you have to become mean. You do not mind acting mean but it is so much effort! But what if you really become mean? The fort you have built has become you then, and you have lost your identity.
But you should be more afraid of the fort than the reality around it. By building the fort you have made yourself even more vulnerable that something outside you can just get inside and change you!
To prevent this, there should be something in your life that brings out your hidden softness. Some constant light that will always provide warmth and keep burning even in the coldest, windiest night. Something that will never let you forget who you are and why you are doing whatever you are doing, that will always show you the direction and whisper- keep going, I am here right next to you. Of course, its mere faith, faith in a person, faith in a process, faith in a deity, but faith is important. We must not become immune to this light. We must make ourselves vulnerable to it and let it tear us apart if it will. It is a gamble you cannot escape.
There must be some way to find this light. Or is time the only answer? We should not mind as long as there is one.
No comments:
Post a Comment