People
They say that life throws the bitterest challenges to those who can endure them the best, the strongest people. But then maybe the Maker or Fate has no idea how much you suffer because of this. There is a price to pay for being too good, too brilliant, too nice, too pure. The price is so strong that your soul is ripped apart when you actually have to pay it. There are so many different kinds of people in the world, but essentially, you can really see them from three perspectives. There are those who are insecure, malevolent, and mostly harmful. These are plentiful, as insecurity and envy are very human traits, deplorably so. And then there are those few who have kept their sanity intact, keeping the core of their humanity like a little candle in a fierce wind, a determined little candle which never ceases to burn, with life and with passion. This is not to say that people are purely either the former kind or the latter; human nature is much too complicated for that, and people definitely react differently to various people. This perspective is like looking at life through a microscope, where the littlest details do nothing to mar the essential nature of objects. Dealing with the first two kinds is very simple. It is the third kind which is capable of chilling your bones with fear and utter disgust. In the eyes of the innocent, Life is like a glittering Goddess put on a pedestal, to be worshipped, cherished and revered to one’s highest potential. It is the third kind which dares to defile all human experience, making it a dirty, ugly and sordid joke instead of a sacred gift only to be handled with the greatest love possible. It is the third kind who fools the most gullible, simple people, and perhaps, commits the greater folly of fooling itself. These people are blessed and burdened with the gift of mesmerizing other people, with their incisive wit, their cutting sarcasm or their endearing mannerisms. Or maybe it is the other way around, where some people are just too good and too stupid to see the faults in the third kind, and just love and accept them as they are. Once these people get the attention or love that they hunger for, consciously or unconsciously they start using the very source of their comfort, like the parasite slowly killing the very tree which guarantees its existence. But what the parasite does not bargain for is the fact that once it has sucked all the love out of its life giver, it will not take long for the parasite to die itself. Unless, of course, it finds another foolish tree to love it and make it stable and strong. Make it thrive. Make it live.
The parasites of this world are usually the ones full of talk about their high ideals and morals. Maybe they are to be pitied, for many of them are the good ones who have been so disillusioned that they have become users. But to be forgiven? Never. They have committed the unforgivable sin of using the love of a pure heart for their own petty vanity, to fill up voids within their own hearts, and to actually believe that what they are doing is the right thing to do and getting away with it. You wonder what will happen to the world when the good souls just give up and die, but the irony of life is such that these very souls battle on, and that is the only kind of battle which can and should be glorified.
Shreya Sanghani.