July 17, 2009

The Invisible Barriers

You refers to someone who is normal and sufficiently social. We is a set of such people.

You go around and you meet people, hundreds of them, all unique in their own special way. You like some, you don't like some and most of them fall in the gray zone. Still you are with the set of people that you've chosen whether its friends, partners, shopkeepers whatever. Do we actually choose the people we want to be with or it is just a matter of chance? Remember the first day you went to school. You sat with someone and shared your lunch. You became friends with them because you knew them since they were kids, but you didn't get to choose them. You didn't get to choose your parents and siblings but still you're happy and consider yourself lucky. You won a game of chance. Understandably, you didn't control much of these proceedings. Let's move further. You grow a sane head on your shoulders. You're in college now, lets say, a residential college. You land up in a hostel and meet the other people around you. You like them and roam around with them. What if, you landed in some other hostel with different set of people? You will still like them and roam around with them. But which case is better, former or latter? Real life samples are definitely not normally distributed. You're a victim of chance. You tend to like the surroundings, which is arguably the best thing to do. What else can you do? Go around and test all possible samples of people and choose the best fit for yourself? Too much of unwarranted work to do. Imagine yourself standing in a lift with a capacity of 8 people, imagine it's full. What do you do? Keep your head down and pretend to be composed individual who's happy with himself. You keep looking at the lift panel from the corner of your eyes and when you've to leave, you leave with a bit of formalities that you probably taught yourself. This isn't limited to lift, you've started doing it in all spheres of life. You have developed invisible barriers. You don't talk without a reason and when there is a reason you talk a lot. If you can't talk even when you've a reason, you're labeled as a dork, a loner or whatever. When did you develop these invisible barriers, which percolated to all facets of your personality? May be you developed those invisible barriers because you stayed with people who had them always. But you didn't choose them, you were just a victim of chance. The invisible barriers is just a scar then. You couldn't go out of your comfort zone, you never tried to meet people that you may like. You were told that a path exists, its safe and it will take you to success. You followed that path. You're not a fool to devise a new way in the wilderness. You never kept yourself alone because you don't like it that way. You stayed with people that were around you, the ones that you didn't choose, the ones you got by chance. You're expecting a conclusion here because you don't do anything without expectations, without a reason. You don't laugh without a reason rather you laugh at those who laugh without a reason. You work for yourself, for your folks and take pride in that. Probably you're doing all right things. You're happy. You've an active social life. You learn lessons from life and become stronger. You make those invisible barriers a part of your life and you don't choose. You take whatever is bestowed upon you. You've chosen the easy way out, you're smart. You'll never go into the wild.