Have often felt – we are scarcely what we are. Breathing pseudo(s) desperately trying to sheathe and swathe.
We are at all times on stage, riveted to some theater, putting up some act. Flanked by changing masks and attires and lost amid turns of playing the king and the clown, being ‘me’ remains largely unrecalled. Sculptured ‘impromptu expressions’, so called ‘cultured’ conversations, learnt mannerisms, imbibed habits, imposed beliefs, deemed tastes, compulsory passions, benchmarked ‘my aims and ambitions’, and such all else comprises living. And like all else this relentless practice too does make a man perfect – perfecting his knack for demonstrating that he is all bar himself.
Soon enough this wont substitutes, rather it overrides, the natural us. Soon enough we forget and soon enough we believe. And believe so much that most of us do not even think any longer that we could be otherwise. We accept this pretense is us, pretending what, we do not know.
And in this endeavor society connives by sophisticating us with the rules of external conformance. Society diligently scripts a basketful of ‘shoulds’ and ‘must bes’. What behavior is good and what is bad, how to dress and how not to, what to eat and how to, how to pray and when to, how to sit and what is ‘ladylike’ - there is a definition for everything. And we, in this perennial play of life, try abiding by the same with commensurate industry. The more intrinsic inner self stays unattended.
Hence the thought – How true is that which is manifested, and if that is not so true then what is it that lies underneath the manifested….
