SUGAR COATED

The world around us isn’t the way it seems. It might seem beautiful to one person and at the same time, it might be hideous to another. The thing is we all see the world through different lenses. We all have different perceptions; we all have faced situations that others can’t even begin to imagine. In such scenarios, we can’t conclude who is right and who is wrong. It is well said that there are always two sides to a story and both sides might be the exact opposite of each other. The stories that are being told for centuries have changed dramatically over vast periods of time. The person who is villain today might have been the hero in the original story but the way it was told changed everything forever. Some of the stories might have been lost because the last person who knew it died and never got to tell anyone about that. It doesn’t make the story untrue or fake; it just means that the story was lost in battle to fate.

As humans evolved, their stories evolved as well. We can’t consider a caveman to tell the same story which we tell to our children. Not only the stories have changed, but our ways of living have also changed. We, as children, have been presented with sugarcoated versions of realities. Not knowing the truth shatters our expectations when we grow up.

Suppose we were told that what we deserve will come to us but when we grow up, we find out that it isn’t the case at all. We have to fight for it and in some cases die in the struggle. Many people have died in their struggle for their dreams. I know that following a dream makes us a better person and all that but what if we are not around to bear the fruits of our own struggle?

What and If are two words but when put together they are dangerous. We are so lost in the beauty of our goal that we don’t even think about struggle that comes in the way and when we face an obstacle, we are left defeated. We are taught to have bigger dreams but we are not taught how to fulfill them. We have extraordinary dreams but we don’t have extraordinary determination to fulfill them. We are losers trying to pose as winners and someday, we might become winners.

Sometimes, we even know the truth but we don’t even accept it. Realities can be soul-crushing. They have the monstrous ability to wreck our imaginations and ruin our lives for good. The fact that we don’t accept the realities is based on the thinking that it might wreck pretty little world of ours. Realities are destructive and constructive at the same time. It is a paradox I am still trying to figure out.

Suppose a girl loves her father so much. She is told that her father is an honest businessman and lover her mother very much. One day, she finds out that her father is actually a monster and beats her mother. Now, what she was told was a complete lie. When she found out about her father, her perception of the whole world changed. Not knowing the truth might have made her love her father, but, it also made her believe in something that wasn’t true at all. Knowing the truth at the beginning would have been hurtful but realizing that she was deceived by her own parents did more damage. She was the primary damage and the damage caused her to be a source of secondary damage. It started a chain reaction like a disruption in a spider web and everything around her got messed up. If she was told the truth at the beginning would have been destructive but then it might have urged her to be better than her father, making it constructive. Was the pretty image of her father worth all the lives that were affected because of that?

IF you ask me, my answer will be NO. People want to live in perfect worlds and fairytales. People want to believe that they are all good. People don’t want to accept the truth because they know that it will shatter their lives. People are cowards.

Life is no fairytale; it gets ugly sometimes.

Posted: 13 Jan 2021