I have learnt.

"Emotions are celebrated and repressed, analyzed and medicated, adored and ignored -- but rarely, if ever, are they honored."

I have learnt how to protect feelings. I have learnt how to protect my opinions. I have learnt that feelings and opinions cannot be shared to an unworthy and untrustworthy audience. For me, feelings were like diamond- Something that could last forever- unchanged and perpetual-Untouched by corrosion, heat, snow or wind. Opinions were like silver, albeit versatile, though liked and respected by all. Even if opinion’s meant being derived from facts, it almost never meant that facts could be replaced. I understood that facts had their own place and opinion, their own. And that in no way could opinion overpower facts.

I have learnt the truth today. I have learnt that opinions are like girls who have been breached of their virginity. I have learnt that they are a raped version of facts and one is different from the other only in terms of distortion. Their worth is similar to a girl subject to gang rape- thrown from one man to another- becoming bloody with each penetration- and being worsened with every man it goes by.

Feelings are like stones- kicked and punched. So what if I thought they were diamonds? Can a person decipher from the looks of a stone if it can be refined to a diamond? Does everybody have the worth or the skill of a diamond cutter to unlock their beauty? Is everyone rich enough to adore the beauty of a diamond?

I have learnt where I went wrong. I have learnt that there is a severe level of compatibility between a person’s body and his soul. I tried putting different souls in different bodies! God hasn’t given anyone a license to do that when he himself doesn’t own it. Feelings were mine and opinions were mine. But the bodies I had instilled them into were different. Funny how it is, that in me flow the same blood that flows through the blue veins of all analogously programmed human beings, but still, I am made biologically incapable of donating my blood to everyone. How then can I believe that my feelings and opinions be welcomed by everyone I meet? Is it not natural for them to pollute it and throw it on to someone else? Is God too not a slave to nature?

I have learnt to have a world of my own. I have learnt that I need to be my own rock, my own island, my own hero. I have learnt that the only person worthy to harbour my feelings and opinion is my own soul. I have learnt that no two humans can see the same feeling or the same opinion in the same light. Why did this learning not dawn earlier? I know not! Can any two places on the earth share the same amount of sun’s light and heat? Can any two people in the world have the same thumbprints? Can a murderer of a little girl look at her in the same light as her mother? I have learnt that it’s not fanciful to have a world you can call your own. It’s a necessity of life. There is a reason why we are born alone, we die alone.

I have learnt that if I am brimming with feelings and opinions that I crave to share, I must fix them, bite on them, claw them but not share to an unworthy audience. I have learnt that when it is flushing in the heart, overflowing out of it, all I can do is hammer it back. That I keep hammering and hammering it on and on. Why? Because it would feel really good when I stop! I have also learnt that one’s opinion is another’s infection. When one gets sick, does it not start with a single infection? Is it not one lone nasty intruder? Pretty soon the intruder duplicates- becomes two- then those two become four-and those four become eight- then, before your body knows it, it's under attack. It's an invasion. And then the big question arises- once the invaders have landed, once they've taken over your body, how the hell do you get rid of them?

I have ALSO learnt that I don’t want to learn all that I am forced to. I don’t want to learn that a person is born only to become emotionally challenged. That in the making of a world you can ‘call your own’ there would be no one who can step in, hold you by the hand and tell you, ‘I understand’! That it’s legal for someone to cut you with a knife, but it’s criminal to bleed. If you come in this world with a body of flesh and bones and organs and feelings, then bones would break, organs would burst and flesh would be ripped. You have a biological licence to sew the flesh, repair the damage, and ease the pain. But what when feelings break down? What when opinions are not only discarded like a piece of dung but also raped, what does one do? Is there any science? Are there any hard and fast rules? You can just feel your way through it! And the irony sub stands still- that you’ve to feel you way through it alone. That if you share it, it’ll be spit at.

I have learnt that I will never be able to grow up. I have learnt that none of us do really grow up. We get taller, we get older and we get sensible but we never really grow up. I have learnt that ‘once upon a time…happily ever after”, the stories that we tell are the stuff of dreams. Fairy tales don’t come true. I have learnt the reality is much stormier, much murkier. I have learnt that even if we grow up, we still have the same problems when we were five- We are still forever stumbling. I have learnt that for most part, we like a bunch of kids running around in a playground, trying desperately to fit in, sharing emotions and feelings, throwing tantrums sometimes and exchanging smiles on some other.

In the end I have learnt- that the castle in the fairy tales, well it might just not be a castle but a hut of barn. That the frog, it may be just that and no prince! I have learnt that we have to be like the frog living the well who considers the well all his world because it’s all he has seen. Indeed, it’s just ‘my world’ that I need to see. That if I come out of my own world, I’ll die. Does a fish out of water not shudder? Isn’t a baby born within 5 months of pregnancy a still life?

I am striving each day to make ‘the world of my own’ a better place to live in. Are you?