Freedom and fear, should it be tested and if yes, how much? ~ A Perspective of life

What makes me write today? I don’t know. But since such positive urges come rare to me, I never question the intent. Perhaps, when my mind is clogged with a plethora of thoughts and they just need some wings to fly away, my indolent fingers spring into action to release them so that my mind can spare some more bytes in my RAM for more junk to fill in ;)

Jokes apart, that’s not the reason why I feel like writing today. A couple of days back, a fleeting thought crossed my mind and I put it as my status message on FB. It read – ‘People who suddenly enter the highs of life, often forget their self, until one day, when there is no deeper place to drown in, they realize they have hit rock bottom..... and all of a sudden, they search for that light at the end of the tunnel, which now appears nothing more than a mirage.....just a passing thought!’. There were a bazillion reasons for why this thought made its way into my mind, but there was one significant reason for it, which I would call – abusing freedom and abandoning fear to wrong. Food for this thought came as a result of reading one old edition of Reader’s digest. (I love reading this magazine no matter how old it is and no matter how many times I have read it, line by line and between the lines!). And there was this article about a 14 year old girl who had everything going good for her, right from getting straight A’s in academics to getting accolades in all extracurricular activities, until the day she got introduced to a world filled with smoke, drugs and cacophony. However, her story ended on a good note, with her coming out of her mess, after a tirade with herself, fighting the self, fighting the society and fighting with all her spirit against the demonic urges which only tried to pull her back into the seemingly high world, in spite of which, she did manage to make a surprise comeback and is probably some practicing lawyer today. I am not sharing this story indicating what drug abuse or smoking pot could do to a person. We all know that! But to get into a bad company or probably to indulge in ecstatic highs of life does not need an age factor! What happened to this 14 year old, decades back could still happen to a 40 year old today! My point here is, why do people do it or say, succumb to pleasures which are more of a pain in the real world? Questions like ‘Do we, as adults, understand our limits, our weakness?’ or ‘Do we at least try to comprehend the repercussions of abusing our freedom for our own pleasure (which is more often a mirage), hurting many people en route?’ are definitely worth pondering…!!

These questions need some more soul searching to get the answers straight and right! There are N reasons for a person to drift away from a banal yet normal life to a seemingly attractive hippie life, to get away from worries and heartaches, to escape the madness of work and perhaps to free oneself from battling a few biting family issues! All these reasons often point to one stark reality – failure to detect the thin line of difference between what is genuine and fake. And this often happens when people trust their surroundings and the conditions factoring them, completely without any inhibitions and fear. I would term this kind of trust as incredibly dim-witted, nothing more nothing less! I was taught when young, ‘It is good to be fearless, but it is insanely stupid to be so, when you are on the wrong side of the road, knowingly or unknowingly’. People often do not understand the importance of fear and freedom by birth, until the day, their world comes crumbling down and they ponder, whatever happened. Any attempt to retrospect? Well the word, its meaning is ignored post the consequences of every problem, as much time is spent in fretting and ranting about the events bygone, trying to fix the cracks in a relationship which only get wider and wider with time and then finally escaping the trauma by ignoring the root cause. Then the cycle repeats, viciously drawing the person deeper and deeper into an abyss where the ability to think sane gets distorted and the energy to sustain the ramifications diminishes, leaving behind only pain, more pain and more…..

It is difficult for such a person, undergoing such trying times to see through people and circumstances hounding him or her. The much awaited self awakening can only happen, if the person attempts for once, to sees through himself/herself and then try to detect the flaws! For that he needs to believe that something definitely is not aright with him. Often self questioning is the best way to bring in that belief and it is the only mirror in the world that can give the person the right picture, no matter how deep the shit he has fallen in, is! Sounds blunt, but true…..

Abusing freedom and recklessly abandoning fear is a cataclysmic combination of hazards that can wreck a life in no time without warning. Conservativeness and limiting freedom in our society is often mistaken for a physical fence, which in the real context is an imaginary boundary that prevents self from faltering. Unfortunately, many people erase the boundaries or jump over it, only to realize later in life, there is never going to be a turning back, time will never rewind and life does not give everyone a second chance to redeem self and be good again! After all, every person is responsible alone for his decisions and actions and he alone will endure the consequences of his actions! Sad, but true!