Be Something!
We were warned pretty early about our never ending wants. The desire to have it all, to be everything all at once , to own everything the heart demands. When the days didn’t bear the heaviness, one day, there was a class full of children learning how to add, another day there was an interviewer asking questions and the next day was a family having lunch together. The days mushed into each other, from a doctor prescribing medicines to a chef making a five-star meal out of clay and leaves. The possibilities were endless. And if I mastered the strokes on paper or picked up that guitar we bought two years ago. What could be the end?
Glued to the big screen in front of me, I see lights, shining so bright. The ever changing trends of fashion, media and show-biz. Those glittery visuals and catchy phrases filled with the luxury of generations of billionaires made me want to be an actress with no sense of how to deliver a dialogue — an anchor or a journalist. What a plan! Then I stumbled upon an animated video of how blood transfers from the heart to the arteries and somehow makes its way back to the heart. Now a person with his hair and face covered is on the board — with a white lab-coat and a stethoscope listening to every heartbeat. But what if the heartbeat stops. Will I be able to handle my failure and the tragedy that follows. How do you be a medic? — I put it in the search engine. My eyes scan the various results that come up. Lifted my fingers to count and the medic was off the board now. The impatience and the inability wouldn’t let me. The results, the answers, and the dreams fade away as the air gets poisonous. The kind of confidence you need to aspire to be, while counting on your fingers. And the board is empty for a while, as the bubble of imagination grows.
One blink and now the world resides in my palm. There it goes swirling with the glitter to the whiteness of coats. The whole world is painted in white and red. The white goes on conquering and the red keeps on roaring. The question what’s next meets its counterpart will there be some ‘next’? And the over pessimistic nature of perception is dominant here, but I don’t usually practice practical thinking that often.
The sudden tension in the air is undeniable. Could be Monday blues or the dreadful winter months. But it’s still October. Who has sprinkled sorrow so early is what everyone wonders. The red and white can drinks suddenly taste metallic. All the food once so dear seems poisonous. Each coin spent feels like a robbery. Why does the sky look like it’s about to burst open? All the land in the world looks barren. And there I see the reason. The world and its people have suffered a lot but now the brutality is a bit too on the nose. I stayed awake at night wondering where I went wrong? How was I so unaware? The world was burning around me and my eyes stuck to the board that hoarded my possible future. I did not care to lend a hand to those trampled on the ground.
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All of my possibilities were available in front of me but the doom of others was not. The lack of everything was biting me and crawling under my skin. The eyes of infants, the burnt skin of the women, the hopeless cries of men with their children in a bag seeped in, haunting the core of me. Now, I want to be a human.
If you could wonder for a moment what would be the wonders you would choose? If the world surrenders to the cries of the weak and withered souls. And pay attention to the bravery of those innocent ones that continue to be a ray of sunshine even when the clouds burst with fire. Their eyes show the river polluted with debris and blood. Their smiles represent the border between humanity and humans. They fear the ones that help them. Hoping the outstretched palms don’t turn into a fist. If someone asks what’s the price of lending a helpful hand, let them see the decades of rage released and brutality suffered.
The red and white in the cans of your favorite drink do not taste metallic to you? Don’t they stain your hands the darkest shade of red, your soul the colour of the universe you spend millions looking at. Their lands left barren and now, their eyes still full of hope. As they once again get up to rejoice, do not strike their wounded wings. For now, even the lowest levels of earth would collapse before accepting you.
If I am human enough to care and feel, I think I can be anything, I can have the empathy to help the grieving, the patience to wait for the right answer and the love to hold dear ones together, paint the world white and hum the harmony of humanity.
