I Don’t Know Me

The world revolves round…the scientists have proved but it is not seen. We, none of us have ever seen. But we believe that it’s true. And I guess, even now, as I sit here writing this down, the world is revolving round. It doesn’t heed what I do or where I am. I have wondered over the phenomenon of the very survival of our being and I still do…but somehow I can’t think further. World seems a mystery to me. I don’t even know myself. Just a small heap of flesh in the gigantic world.

I have now seen this world for twenty long years…enough to have made me see what I really am or who I really am. But it’s too sad to note that I haven’t been lucky enough to succeed there. Like everyone else, I go on with the world. We say we are living. Life itself is an automaton. A mechanical doorway.

As the chores of life go on, I meet people. Beings like me. They, I am sure are mystified as much as me. I see them, shake hands, and to them I’m (my name). But even as I utter that, my supposed name, I get a click of some doubt. It’s just a label…a name given to me, so that I’m identified from the rest. It’s a physical address by which others can recognize me. We never know what’s beyond that. The person. The very person that’s inside.

I feel myself so lucky to have born in a Buddhist country cuz I wonder if I’d ever have become one otherwise. At least me being a Buddhist and one who believes in the core of its meaning, I could learn the complexity of our being – if nothing more. There is that law of ‘cause and effect’; the birth and dying. I was once driven into a frenzy of overwhelming thoughts which made me lose interest in my work. I didn’t and still I don’t find any meaning in it. Even as I sit in the class listening to lectures and doing experiments, I keep thinking what I am doing here, when, all we have got to know is completely ignored. People like us!! When we don’t even know ourselves, how our body functions, what death and living are, we jump so far and assume so much, trying to learn something that is not even necessary. You know, I can’t help wondering. I really can’t. the instant you read this, I know the instantaneous question that pop up in your mind will be, why I can’t simply pursue spiritualism. We can think; and I can. But to really come into action is a task far harder than you can actually think. I’ve been asking over and again, why I can’t leave everything. Simply. And move ahead to where I ought to be. I even cried. I felt like I was watched. I felt the need so much – the need to understand myself. I want to know myself. I gaze point-blank at this urge. As our human minds are under continuous process of change, I do forget after a while. But the after-effect is stronger. It never really leaves me.

Once last year, I really was so sure that I would leave everything – I tell you, I didn’t find anything worthy in the material I was studying. There was no substance. As thoughts flow in my mind, I see my parents. I owe them the world. I am thinking that, if I do what I want to, it’d come like a thunderous blow to them. It would shatter their dreams. Because, they never said they wanted me to study spiritualism. I think again and I tell myself that it will make them unhappy only once. If I can leave the stupid study of science behind….as the time passes and I come to know the meaning of life, I will be able to do them good in a larger while. I can give them happiness and peace forever. But next instant, I find myself where I was. I wake up in the same place. I find myself doing a short prayer, carrying my books and hurrying to class! But I’m as good as I am absent. I feel sorry to see a great number of people sitting there who have never even thought of death. As this thought of death strikes, I grow grim. I fear I’m getting late. What if death gets to me before I even start my dream?

Since I found that I could never leave this course for some reasons like, “Dreams of my parents and the government”, I thought its better I bury them for a wile. I tried acting ignorant. I didn’t let myself confront me. I said, “Finish what you have started.” But my interest in studies couldn’t be revived or I think its better I admit that I was never there. Now, I go out with my friends, I laugh with them and pretend to have fun. I talk all the nonsense like sex and love and they enjoy. But they do not know what is running in my mind. If you can’t be where you want to be, you have to try being happy where you are. People at large are carried away by these futility at large anyway. If I talk my mind, I’m sure they won’t understand. You’ll find me jolly but deep inside, there is always this ache, the lure to know myself. I can’t understand me.

This moment I will be philosophically tuned. Next instant I’m a literal flirt. I cry and I laugh. I’ll tell you this: I didn’t even believe in love – like, I thought there never was love – I mean love between a man and a woman – this common love people get carried away by. With my friends, I so bubbly talk and laugh, but back in my room, I pray and there I encounter them again. I can neither start, nor leave. I’m lying nowhere and I’m no one.

I pray and seek answers everyday. But I don’t know me.