People are power hungry. Give them the power to hurt you and you’ll see. They’ll slash at you with the sceptre of pain – looking to maim, injure or fatally wound. And i mean fatally wound in the most metaphorical sense, of course. And not even the kind that leads to death. Just to a point of no return. Hurt that cannot heal, even when someone else comes along and tries to fix it, to put you back together. It is then that you finally know what humpty dumpty felt like all those years back.
People are greedy. Give them all you’ve got, and they will come back for more. They will raise you up, make you feel limitless, then will take from you till you feel bound. They will empty you like a packet of their favourite candy, and discard you just as easily. People are wrong. More often than not, they will share their vast expanse of knowledge and generalisations, much like this one, and they will be wrong. Remember that they are wrong, and that what you believe to be true is true and can be true, only if you believe it strongly enough. People are disappointing. You will peg your hopes on them, give them all you have, and ironically enough, you can be certain that they will not fail to disappoint. They will break your heart, waste your time, and lead to countless empty tubs of ice cream. And although the above form a vast majority of the population, you Will come across kindred souls that arent the People you have been warned against; they are the people you instantly know are yours. They will surprise you by catching you unawares. You may meet them the next time you visit the corner coffee shop, or as you stumble outside a club, waiting to get away from the drunken hoi polloi. They may be at your next lecture, and if fate will have it, at your favourite bookstore. They are the wondrous souls who will have the power, but do not find instances to wield it, they will not be greedy, will not wrong nor will they disappoint. They are the ones who will join you in your journey to a Great Perhaps. They are the ones who will be there to hand you another tub of ice cream. The ones to tell all the king’s horses and all the king’s men to step aside, roll up their sleeves and figure out a way to put you together in a way that would hold. They will unscatter you; they help you know what you believe is true, regardless of the truth; they will allow you to trust and then question; they will teach you how to expect. They will teach you to be fearless.
People are many things. What distinguishes us is how much of all those things we are, and how much of them we choose to be. How the shades of white may be darker than the bleakest black. How there may be more shades of gray than you can imagine; not all right, not all wrong. And what matters is that we find our complements, and get it just right, so that we create something meaningful in the midst of this existentially fraught existence.
