The Right, The Wrong

There are ways in which one is expected to behave, rules set to differentiate between the good and the bad, the right and the wrong. Laws established to punish the ones who cross the line and step into the not-to-be-talked-about other side, step down to decadence, to the chamber of demons and grotesque evil that turns them into one of their own. Yet how many of us have actually been there? Is it really a chamber where red tongued demons float about in harmonious vice and lick the blood of the innocent? Or is it the superficial image imposed in our minds so panoramically by the even more superficial society?

What would be a valid explanation for wrong? Is it wrong for a young child to want what is not his own? Most will disagree with me for the child doesn’t know what he should or should not want. But it is still ‘most’, not all. The idea of wrong and right various with age groups, personalities and background. Yet how can we so easily claim that a person is wrong if in fact what we perceive to be wrong might be right to several others? How do we continue to rely and want to abide by the rules set by society, when the ones who comprise of the society seldom act according to their lofty words? When all they are doing is dinning with the devil himself and pointing fingers at us? When their sons and daughters are associated with all that is wrong and they sit around and pass sardonic judgments on you and your offspring? Perhaps we are blind, blind to see all the obscenities, the injustice and the sycophancy so impeccably hidden. Or rather, are we frightened? Frightened of being labeled, being known in society as ‘the one’ who broke the rules and ‘the one' that should be discriminated and questioned, better yet discarded?

Relationships cease to remain the same with time. Most tend to take a downhill ride, crashing into stones and thorns on the way. We tend to contemplate and ruminate about what went wrong. Was I to blame? Where did i go wrong? And the questions too keep crashing like landslides in our heads, leaving us in a blurry world of bewilderment that only caters to the lost. Some of us are not the obsessing kind and seldom wish to ponder over what has been lost. These are the brave ones, the insensitive ones, the ones who would say ‘Never regret, Never apologize’ like John Le Carré had stated through one of his characters in the novel ‘The Naïve and Sentimental Lover’. We say we are individuals, each unique in our behavior and personality. As true as that is, my sociology professor once said ‘You say you are individuals but I do not see any of the young men wearing a skirt or anyone being naked. I do not see anyone standing on their desks or dancing around. But y’all are sitting down where you are supposed to be and wearing clothes that may have different colors and patterns, regardless the men are all wearing some form of shirts and pants and the women dressed in shalwar kameez”

Hence are we to consider that sociology has invalidated the obvious? We again fail to see the obvious. We may be unique and diverse but our actions put us all in groups or patterns which reveals that maybe we are not that different after all. Well then how do we acknowledge people with whom we have nothing in common, whose personality changes like the colors of a chameleon and ‘us and them’ could be compared to ‘ebony and ivory’? I assume some things are just beyond our comprehension and are a part of the wondrous, enigmatic, horrendous, unpredictable and dark journey that we call life.

Will the surprises ever end? Will we have peace of mind and will the questions finally fade away? I can’t help but smile because I just realized I’m again asking more questions. Maybe we shouldn’t question or maybe we should I do not know, but yes I do know that whoever said ‘Ignorance is bliss’ couldn’t have said anything more right in his/her life.