THE DIFFERENT VOICES IN MY HEAD….

Heloz to everyone there. Hope you doing well. Before you start thinking from the title of this post that I have Dissociative Identity Disorder (earlier known as Multiple Personality Disorder), let me clear all the airs. Or rather wait for a while and you’ll know it for yourself why this post has been titled as that.

Since quite some time, I have been perturbed about issues of maintaining good, healthy social relationships. I don’t know if you consider this as a topic of interest even worth reading, but for me relationships matter a lot (not only in reality, but also when it comes to figuring out what they are, their nature, content and so much more).

Some of the things I’ve been hearing from my friends are:

1. People these days are not trustworthy, so BE ON YOUR GUARD. Start from NOT trusting them, and when you think they have done something to win your trust, that is when perhaps you can go ahead and ‘trust’ them. (It’s like giving a trust an entire new definition, that which belongs to the ‘today’s GENX’!)
2. It takes a good amount of skill to handle social relationships. It is an art. (And just when I begin to appreciate my friend for the way she handles things and people, she becomes modest and tells me ‘it’s all in the name of experience’- Sad I don’t have much of it you see :/).
3. And then there are others who tell you, that ‘all are not the same’, see for yourself and you’ll get to know..blah blah. (Thank you! this is one of the basics I learnt in Psychology- that individual differences exist!).

And now the voices which have been dancing in my head, making it difficult for not only me but perhaps for those around me to figure out what ‘I’m actually up to?’

I wish it was easy to explain, but I’ll try my best. One part of the voice which I hear is which keeps telling me NOT to trust people, the other part tells me that people are not actually bad and then I bump into this third one in the newspaper today…and here it goes :

“Live more authentically. Drop the masks; they are a weight on your heart. Be exposed. Of course it is going to be troublesome but that trouble is worth it because only after that trouble will you grow and become mature. And then nothing is holding life. Each moment life reveals its newness. It is a constant miracle happening all around you says Osho.”

While I could write a good number of words on this thought itself, but I’ll refrain from doing so. The matter of concern right now comes down to a conflicting situation: Should one be an open book, like the way Osho says ‘expose yourself, and drop your masks’ or should one wear masks, portraying a different self with different people? ( Some of you might think that what Osho is saying might not be akin to being an open book, but that is what I think of it to be for the time being- You see moment to moment our perspectives might mould in different shapes).

All I know is that I haven’t ever tried buying masks leave alone wearing them! I’m what I’m ( haha Reebok’s liner) and yes that is true. But surely this doesn’t apply to everyone around me. There will be people who often go to the Masks Market, to sell their old ones in order to buy the new and the latest ones, or there may be those who have been wearing the same mask for years, unable for you to identify the real side of them (so that mask is what you take it to be as real!).

Why I’m talking about all this is because there is this third voice in there too, that which is pure, that which is ‘my own’, which you might term as my gut feeling or what my instinct says. Now the cynical aspect comes in when these very people will give you a good nice so called ‘advice’ and then go on to say “But in the end do what your heart says”. Oh! Sure, as if all this talk of yours left that little pure bit in my heart as pure. Even my purest piece of heart gets all saddened by the impurities around it and says “Ah! Great, is there any area in here for me to live?”

What happens to me eventually? I get all entangled it the threads of the social obligations (being nice to people, don’t stop talking to them right away because you never know when you might need them, they are your elders, so respect them no matter what they say to you and the list goes on….) I hope you do realize my situation and its perspective too. And then I think that are social relations all about selfishness, fakeness? Is there no space for pure exchange of emotions, where you can be yourself? So every time you step out of your home sweet home, you inevitably are wearing a mask even though you are oblivious to that fact?

Oh dear!! I wish life wouldn’t have been this complex. The vicious circle of whom to trust and whom not to trust will takes it course to us being hurt if we become too friendly, or rather our ‘very own self’ with that person. And who is the cause of that hurt? Oh not the other person, you see, it’s YOU!! (Yeah…because your friend told you not to trust and you went too far, oh don’t you shed your tears now ok?)

This and the network of threads which are intertwined with these make social living a hell carved out from the heaven (what it used to be at one time). And the fact is that with the technology and the advancement happening around us in every nanosecond, things are only getting more confusing and complex. (If not for you, but at least for me)

Signing off with a HOPE and a BELIEF that the threads shall get untangled some day and that people will continue to be nice and good the way I have thought of them to be!!