“I’ve reached a point where I hardly care whether I live or die. The world will keep on turning without me and I can’t do anything to change events anyway. I’ll just concentrate on studying, and hope that everything will be all right in the end. It’s a wonder I haven’t abandoned my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them, because I still believe, inspite of everything, that people are truly good at heart. It’s utterly impossible for me to build my life on a foundation of chaos, suffering and death. I see Germany being transformed into a wilderness. I hear the approaching thunder that, one day will destroy us too. I feel the suffering of millions. But, despite everything, I believe that peace and tranquility will return one day.”
ANNE FRANK---THE DIARY OF A YOUNG GIRL….
As I sit down to write today, I feel a tremendous surge of welled-up emotions within me. I know I need to write down. There is too much going on, and I can’t tell these things to anyone. Deep within questions bother me. At times I wish I could be what I used to be. But change is dynamic, and I have changed. So why have I quoted these lines from my inspiration Anne Frank??
For some reason I can see myself in Anne Frank. There is some sort of deep connection which only I and she can feel. A tragic heroine, she amazes me with her innocence. She lost her childhood in that attic, yet it remained, as she tried to understand the world, her world from her hiding place. She grew up at the age of twelve. She became a woman, and she grew with grace. The child gave her hope, and the woman, courage. I guess that is how an ordinary person becomes extra ordinary. To be frank, I am not looking for the extra-ordinary. I am just searching for my “self”..
“Who am I?”-- this question has been bothering me for a long time. Everytime I find an answer, I realise I am no longer what I realized I am. It seems to me that change is faster than the wind. Deep-rooted crisis have shakened me from the core. I am scared, scared of what the world is turning into. My friends tell me that it is none of my concern. But I can’t rest. No, I am not trying to be a prophet. I don’t know if I have a solution, but all I can share is my growing concern.
At each point of time I have an innate sense of awareness now. I know that whatever I do, only I am solely responsible for my actions. There is no point in playing the blame game. I am not saying that, I have stopped blaming someone for my guilt. I am no God. I am a so-called human being trying to be “human“, trying to understand the “do’s” and the “don’t’s”. And why we are what we are, and why not what we ought to be.
To Anne, Germany was turning into a wilderness. But it was not Germany alone. The whole world did, and it is still in the wilderness. I guess someone rightly pointed out that civilisation is the greatest mis-fortune one can imagine. We, the so-called intelligent superior species invented and we are destroying everything with our very own genius. Such paradoxes are hard to understand. But I haven’t given up.
I am not happy, or rather I pretend that I am. Can we actually be happy in the truest sense of the term? I guess happiness is the most elusive thing in the world. We think that we are happy. But I guess, we all believe what we want to believe. With all my shining optimism, I know I’m a tired little soul, trying to find my place in this mad rat race called Life.
Society is a paradox. I realized it as I read Dostoevsky’s “The Idiot”. The moment we say that we are not hypocrites, we actually become one. At one level, this sounds like a cliché. But it is also something we elusively try not to realise, and even if we do, it leaves us in a state of denial. I love humanity and the people who make it what it is. I guess I have finally grown up. Earlier, it was so easy to categorise into the “good” and the “bad”. I hated, and I hated with venomous poison. I know at which level I can be vindictive. I wanted to kill. Rationality left me at times, as I felt stranded trying to make choices. But, I guess the child in me saved me each time. I am not saying that I have never made mistakes. I have, but I have accepted my flaws, thanks to Anne Frank. Now I can say that I dislike situations n certain people. I just know that I can never hate. Given the chance I would love to apologise to all those I have hurt in the past and in the present. I don’t give a hang about Ego.
I have learnt many things the hardest way. But I guess we all do. I am not sad, because it has made me tougher. At times I can be stupid, but it teaches me at every step. I have grown, and I will. For now I know that being human is so difficult. Why do we hurt?
I am ready to learn and make mistakes all the way just to learn. They say that the greatest journeys are the ones that take you home. I am ready to face home, and be a part of that home. I am thinking of a brand new hope, the only road, the one I have never known, and where it will eventually go. I cried the first time I read Anne Frank. And I still do each time I read it. It inspired me back then, and it always will.
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