Artwork by Alessandra Genualdo

There is a beauty and loneliness in deserted playgrounds, clear skies, and empty schools. It’s like the emotions that start to well up when you hear a Johnny Cash song looking at a sunset with a slight breeze in the air.

You’ll hear your heart’s voice and it’ll be louder than any sound you’ve ever heard. It’ll be louder than your parents’ fights that still echo in your dreams, it’ll be louder than the dissatisfied silent shouts of the masses, and it’ll be louder than the voice of pain that echoes inside your chest all the time.

Listen to what it has to say. It’s going to keep repeating the same truths you try so hard not to hear. It’ll be a voice telling you to keep fighting for something you’re thinking of giving up on because you feel too tired of waiting for something you think you’re not going to get. It’s the prayer you say despite being an atheist.

The answer won’t come from the voice of God, but your own. A voice you claim that feeds into your self-doubt.

The emptiness of your own self won’t be filled by any amount of money or success. It’ll be filled with a purpose that brings you closer to your own self. It’ll be filled when you stand in silence and see: you’re the only one you ever needed to believe in. Mountains will turn back into molehills, hatred will turn into a purpose, and your doubt will become humility.

Nobody wants to be alone, yet almost everyone else, one time or other in their life, find themselves so alone that it overrides any other thought they have about their own self.

Everyone knows how it feels. You’re not lonely when you don’t have anybody near, but when you feel incomplete. How does it feel to know that you’re the number one reason for your own unhappiness? It’s devastating, no?

Just like those playgrounds, schools, and sky, you can’t see your own beauty in being how you are. Well, listen to yourself when nobody, including yourself, is talking or thinking.

You’re not perfect and, let me tell you, neither is anyone else. You’re flawed. The only difference between you and the person who seems perfect to you is that they own their flaws; they don’t shun themselves and therefore have the ability to be more than their flaws.

Success is attractive but freedom of mind is essential. It’s not about what you own, but nothing should own you. And, in today’s world, we are owned by everything we own. Be different.

—

Oshin Ahlawat is a young poet and writer based in New Delhi, India. “I believe people who write are like tornados and cyclones. We wreck a lot of lives; for better or worse. It all depends on the people who read our work. They decide where the damage is going to be; the heart or the mind and whether it’s going to be for the good or for worse. I wish to give them the choice to decide that. I’m just going to focus on doing what I want”, she says. 

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