The dual nature of human beings: Innocence vs. Ignorance, two sides of the same coin.

Everything in life is a double edged sword. This is something I have been told a million times before, but it took me a while to actually get it. Love hurts because it is love, freedom is scary because now you can do anything, with ambition comes suffering and with desire comes desperation. Anything must be done in moderation, I understood that. But, when I came to know about this concept where they said that under the seemingly innocent appearances lie the most deceitful of hearts, I was sceptical. How can it be so? I wondered.

The law of the world, is survival of the fittest. Maybe because it is easy for things in abundance to be taken for granted, the goodness of the world has to be balanced by evil. And with the potential of human beings, came what could wipe their entire existence, if left unhinged, the human heart. Many at time we have been told that it is the most unpredictable. So when years ago, a childish me said she wanted to figure out the human heart, she certainly did not foresee what was about to come. The journey started out unexpectedly rough. Because I did not know I was in one. I said it one day and forgot about it the next, only to go through what was about to change my destiny. I used to think destiny was something magical, that in this ever moving mundane life, destiny was a splash of glitter on my grey van. But when she started to unfold, like a peacock displaying her intricately woven feathers, the ordinariness far outran the miracles, that I would have missed them had I not looked closely. And this was one such journey.

I was feeling discontented with life that day. When I looked back, there was nothing of prominence I would have considered a disaster, but life was dull. I didn’t see myself having a plan where I can be happy and my past was negligibly boring. The very feeling that sent me on my healing journey was the very one that stayed the longest with me. My greatest companion, discontentment. She was the reason for my resentment aka. Repressed anger, failed career and relationships. But she was also the very one that brought my hand towards all my issues. That which pulled me out of my rut were the very things that bathed my soul in anguish. Had it not been for her presence how could I have noticed my issues and cured it before disaster struck? I used to wonder why shadow’s manifest in such outrageous circumstances. But I never considered that if it wasn’t for the pain, I would have never thought about tending to the wound. So when I say that suffering and I, we have a love hate relationship, you would have to believe me.

Everything in life is balanced on a scale, incredibly so. In the grand scheme of life, using my suffering as a means to make myself better is both cruel and redeeming. I used to hate the powers for bestowing such upon me and now I have to thank them for the blessings that came out of them. If it wasn’t for the trip, I wouldn’t have found those treasures. As a human I am entitled to my emotions, but as a person I am put in a position where I wonder if all suffering was just a means to freedom, if we did not see ourselves as the victim? That sounds like such a cruel way to put it, but that cruelty brought me out of my resentment.

I used to have a rigid view on life. Black and white were distinct and there was no grey or something in my palette. This formed the basis for my halo effect. And also led to my disappointment, because people were very different from my expectations. Now, is it my fault or theirs? All of this came unravelling when I started to look into my relationships and the reason why they never stayed stable. The longest I have been with people are those with people pleasing tendencies. I must say, we got along well. But when I was pleasing them, I was manipulating them into liking me by showing a side of me I wasn’t. I was obviously putting myself in a position lower than them, but it came a cost, didn’t it?

I used to know someone, not personally. He was obviously cowardly in the face of authority but when the day ended he used to come home and lash out his frustration on those around him, in terrible ways. His wife, bearing the brunt of his anger would take it out on her children. And years later the eldest would go on to become famous in the news for murder. Whose fault do you think this is? When you build the blocks it will obviously point fingers at the authority figure, but isn’t that a bit too far-fetched?

If you were to ask me, I’ll tell you that the fault lie on all three. The father was a coward because he refused to speak up. The mother with the same tendencies refused to stand up for herself and her kids and the child obviously having grown up crooked in such a household, let his inner demons get the best of him even as an adult, refusing to ask for help. None of this was going to be easy, but hey who said things ever were?

People who are pitiful are the most hateful and personally I think this comes from the so-called innocence the society idealises. I used to think I would like to protect the innocence of children, hoping their life would be smooth without worry. But never considered the circumstances that would arrive out of such protection.

Innocence isn’t bad, at face value. Sometimes naivety, obedience and ignorance please our ego and so we happily welcome them into our home, without knowing that you might have lured a wolf back. And one day, it is going to wreck that home to shreds. Someone who is innocent is either stupidly ignorant, hell-a-smart or deceitfully resentful. Keeping your innocence is different from keeping your sanity and just because someone is kind, does not mean they have an innocent heart. I used to believe innocence belonged to children, unadulterated by the worldly affairs, it belongs to those who have been protected in their caretaker’s palms. But what does that protection mean? You protect your child when things go wrong and shield them from what you consider harmful. The world is huge and just because we close our eyes doesn’t mean the demons aren’t there. Children are precarious, while they need protection, it is from that which threatens their life and not from the affairs of the world. By shielding them away, we are taking away a key opportunity for growth while affirming through actions that bad things weren’t supposed to happen to them. And when this repeats, the first thought that will come to mind when things happen in places where you cannot protect them is, ‘Why is this happening to me?’ But we as parents, of course can’t be everywhere and sometimes when things aren’t corrected in time, it has lingering consequences. And this is how victimhood and resentment towards life are cultivated. How far do you think they would go if they keep thinking bad things shouldn’t happen to them?

The gateway to a world filled with resentment looks like this. And innocence is a defence mechanism used by such people to justify their ignorance. Somehow, this has far reaching consequences including but not limited to, entitlement, paranoia, extremity, emotional instability and delusions. So the next time you see someone look ‘innocent’ and unassuming, keep your guards up okay?

I could gleefully conclude that my problems in life stemmed from ignorance, the very innocence that many thought looked good on me. Ignorance is bliss. This is also true. When I started to realise that I was becoming my worst nightmare, I took it upon my entire being to correct it out and the first thing I did was to dabble in all kinds of knowledge. The more I read, the more I realised what was wrong and it scared me. Particularly because, it seemed to prove anything I knew to be false. So like my mentality I shrunk back into my shell and decided to stay low and maybe when I came out the monsters at my door would be gone?

Haha, no! We live a life by our parent’s standards. As a child you idolise them and go by their words like they are the Holy Grail. To you they are perfect, they love you unconditionally and sacrifice their life for yours and that is admirable isn’t it? But hey, why didn’t anyone tell me that educating a child with the expectation of smooching off glory from them or as a means to your future survival is a manipulation technique? And giving them the bare minimum calling it unconditional and holding abuse as love was considered not okay?

Do human beings even have rights anymore or am I not considered human? (*lasagne like noodle tears stream off my face*) So when everything is proved wrong and you are punctured off your balloon and find yourself approaching the ground at a rapid rate, protect your face before you hit the ground, okay? Moral of the story is things are not what they seem, learn to look at things from a higher perspective.

All things in life happen to either expose something or to teach you. There is nothing inherently good or bad, it is all about how you perceive things.