May the perpetual light be, if there is any, with those departed.
The year 2012. Love. God. My father.
It’s a sight to behold. How he packs up his school bag, slipping books in one at a time, ever so carefully. These books and that stationery box with perfectly sharpened pencils may well be his only treasure; at least that is how it seems from here. Has he already realized the value of these books? I am not sure. Would he always care for them, manage them the way he does now? I can’t say.
No one I believe can really look into the mind of a young kid and map out his thinking process. Or perhaps I feel no one should. You know the principals and followers of some unknown revolutionary paradigm must realize, that there are processes in this world which are sensitive by nature, and connected such inherently with different factors that it is almost unbelievable how a seemingly insignificant input, of words, thoughts, or perception, could in actual change the entire process. Like a dent, for life. How a child develops and how he understands our world is, I believe, one such process. It does not need that ‘shaping – melting – reshaping’ exercise, it does not depend on our participation either; all it needs is some support, to augment what is already in there.
We have been undervaluing this for long, tangled in the debate of nature and nurture. Perhaps our job, as teachers, parents and society, is nothing but to hold back our guide books and just assist through the journey.
Journey that leads to the glory. And character.
‘A philosopher’s importance lies not in the correctness of his views, but in whether his ideas move men to action’. Some, irrespective of the earned knowledge or ignorance, go beyond their personal misery; an uncharacteristic feat cutting straight through the realms of both sense and fiction. One such man I met last week, painting his world with a butterfly wing, unaware of whether he was humanizing colors or were they just transcending him into a mystic. A mythical self that could trail any path, as for his curiosity, tangled stories producing nothing but experience are to be found everywhere.
Every story has its own color, but only for a meager fraction of time. It changes, as the subjectivity of both sense and fiction finds peace in confusion. Every story is colored by its interpretation, as you would know; black can be the color of love, and white may well signify both ‘nothing’ and ‘everything’ at the same time.
Why are you scared?