Sunday, June 18, 2006

THE LONER

“Too long now there were secrets in my mind
Too long now there were things I should have said
In the darkness, I was stumbling for a door
To find a reason, to find the time, the place, the hour
Waiting for the winter sun and the cold light of death……

Where I was - I had wings but I couldn’t fly
Where I was - I had tears I couldn’t cry
My emotions was just in an iced lake
I couldn’t tell that until the ice began to break”
-Bruce Dickinson.

(I was sitting in my room waiting for some inspiration to stir my creativity. Waiting for a ray of light to shine through to me to show what destiny had in store for me. My prayer was unanswered…. Just think what it would have been like if you could tell what tomorrow brings…..the simple joy of having to discover each new day would be gone! Then this song played on my music system. I heard the words, picked up my pen and began to write about a person I knew so well…..who could it be??)

At thirty, the loner has grown into a man yet he hardly sees the world through the eyes of a person his age. His words and vision are that of the old. So the young finds him intolerable because he behaves like the old and spoke like them. The old finds him pretentious and amusing because he didn’t speak his age. So the loner walks alone.

It is said that people who walk alone sooner or later develop eccentricities. Other people who observe them soon classify them as mad. Imagine a life where people don’t understand your or your motives. They cannot make head or tail of your verbal expressions let alone understanding your motives. Imagine situations where you have to explain each and every word that you have uttered. The other person somehow fails to grasp what you have emoted. You would surely seem mad to them.

The loner does not have friends at all. He has acquaintances. Some said he never lets anybody in on his innermost thoughts.

They say, “All his emotions are bottled up inside his soul”.

People cannot say if he is happy or sad because they cannot know what is on his mind. His face shows a blank look making him look almost stupid to those who observe him closely.

Well a wise man said, “No man is an island”. And some wise men do aver that something akin to total solitude brings on certain madness to individuals. Sometimes the loner did look like he was one. No one seemed to know the reasons why but he sure seemed strange. Incidences do change people and circumstances do shape lives. It moulds personalities too; some for the better and some for the worse. Experience makes us what we make of our lives. Maybe he was a child of destiny and circumstances.

Being aloof is certainly considered being proud. You make people aware of their insecurities by not mixing around with them. They believe that their worst fears -that they are not attractive to others- have come true. But on your part, it has nothing to do with your personal opinion of an individual but that your trusts must have been misplaced once upon a time and you can never trust again.

Trust is one strange thing. If you place it on someone sometime and find that people do not respect your trust the way that you want them to, you are sort of disappointed and perhaps never again place your trust in that person again. Perhaps it is an inbuilt mechanism of coping with the various adversities of life. May be it is just P-E-R-H-A-P-S, a self protective mechanism where your senses warn you when you are about to commit some mistake. Because the sub- conscious feels the pain of a mistake once committed. It may be something that you call instinct. Once a child burns his finger by touching a candle he is wary of fire. The subconscious registers and each time the child sees a candle a message is shot to his brain that it not only glows but also could burn. The human mind, psychologists would tell you, wants only the pleasant things.

You come across so many people who have seen it all in their brief lifetimes. They may be young but circumstances ensured that they have seen much more than most people older than them. The worst of such circumstances makes people grow up much before their time. Classic examples are children growing up in areas of eternal conflict.

Such a man carries the weight of the world on his shoulders. None has a business carrying the load of others on his young shoulders and that it is usually a heavy load, you know too well. Cursed is the man who can’t express his emotions. Cursed is the man who cannot trust.

So if you walk by and see a haggard old looking man by himself around this place, don’t you worry! It could be the loner out on his walk, you know. It could be the loner out seeking one of his therapies of how to cope with the unseen turmoil churning up the innermost of his soul. The loner might be looking for his peace of mind, that elusive peace of mind which you are not so sure that it even exists.

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