wanderlust

Reasons Why We All Are Alike Despite Our Deep Abiding Differences

Painting by Agata Wierzbicka

Sometimes even the mundane words sound like music, sound like poetry, sound magical, from a set of lips or a stroke of a pen or a brush of fingers on a braille paper. When will we learn that the power of words is not how they’re spoken, but how they’re meant? You can say the same sentence in a variety of ways and it can still mean a million different things.

It is said that a pen is mightier than a sword. Words save people and it can also destroy them. We have such a powerful risky weapon at our disposal and it is so underrated. You don’t have to speak something to give it more meaning. You don’t have to write something to make it more relatable. You don’t have to scream to make people hear you. You have to feel the words you want to say and then scatter them everywhere, silently, patiently.

It takes a whole lot of time and effort to create a hurricane and once you have the power to control it, the world is yours. Power is about control, patience, morals, and conscience. It’s about time you learned how to control yourself. It’s not creating limits but realizing the ones that have been put on you. Find the reasons for them and if they forbid you from being who you want to be, break them and set new ones that agree with your dreams. Like Louis C.K. said, “Self-love is a good thing but self-awareness is more important.”

People put all kinds of limits on themselves to make them feel safe about their own shortcomings; to block the pain, the disappointment, the growth. If you stop feeling the pain, you stop feeling joy too.

Our lives are just a process of losing things we never thought we’d lose and then filling the gaps and spaces as much as we can. Our lives are a process of getting hurt, getting broken, getting grief stricken and then healing, getting up on your feet slowly, surrounded by a million voices, of which some encourage us, some discourage us, some are callings from the past, some are promises of the future, one of them is your mom’s and your dad’s and your siblings, your long lost friends or your favorite teacher’s. Among these voices there will be the voice from your own head too that says demeaning things when you’re super low, holds you back when you achieve something great, gives advice to you and then makes you doubt that advice.

The point is, there will always be voices and in these voices will be trillions of words that will be whispered, shouted and screamed and you’ll hear every single one of them as clear as a bell. Some people, they’re like valleys, they echo the same things they hear every day. Others are like mirrors, they can’t hide what they feel no matter how hard they try. They live with the voices like they’re friendly neighbors. Some call these voices their demons, something they try to avoid at all costs, maybe that’s a survival tactic. Every single one of us has one of the other.

The main thing is nobody is alone in this; even if we all go through our lives alone. We share some destinations with others too along the way. We all have coinciding tourist spots in each other lives. Not just in our lives, but in the real world too, whenever you visit a place, you’re connected to all the people who have ever set foot in that place for centuries.

It’s our imagination and ability to connect the past to the present that makes us nostalgic whenever we visit historical places or when we see centuries old paintings and feel the strokes of the brushes that have long since dried. Our legacy is our creations, which say more about us than anything we have said or will ever say.

Even if you go through your life alone, you’re not. We all have the voices, we all have nightmares about everything we never told anyone, not even out-loud to ourselves. We all have lazy Monday mornings, timeless afternoons, beautiful evenings and lonely nights. Imagine how many people across the globe have the same favourite foods, colours, TV shows, books, authors, actors, singers, or athletes as you. You share your life with everyone on this planet, even if it seems too corny to think about, trust me, it’s like that.

We’re all under the same sky, we all share the same sunlight, we all feel the sickly winter breeze, pleasant autumn evenings, snuggly winter mornings, a colourful lively spring garden, the buzzing of the cicadas in the silent countryside summer afternoon.and we all feel the cool splashes of swimming pools in the summer nights. You’re not alone and you’ll never be alone. No matter who you are, how old you are, where you live, what you do or don’t do.

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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