The Incomplete Man

He just wanted to see what it was about.

The problem with him is that he tries too hard to be this unique unbending personality. It never really worked because man somehow fails to quantify the sum total of aspirations of the kind that actually matter. Maybe if he thought less about the fact that he wanted to be one in a million and focussed on the fact that the stats didn't really matter - that, in our populous world, there would still be another couple of thousands just like him- his life might have seemed just a little less over-bearing.

He wasn't always like this.

He had started of care-free, warm and most essentially satisfied. The world didn't extend beyond too many exotic notions. The flow, if you can call innocence a flow, was smooth. It was close to mindless. You lived for the moment. There was no greater goal. No heart-wrenching responsibility.

Then the coming of age broke out. You know what he detests- failure. Then again that's probably a primal human instinct. Everybody does at some point of time. The choices he made were wrong. The actions often inconsiderate in the eyes of many. Often the thought of self-blame was blunted by what he perceived as fairness. He possessed a crude sense of justice. Every fault needed correction; every hurt a tit.

Isn't that how life should be? Why are some people always more equal than the others. He wasn't asking for utopia- no gaga land of unity. He likes the pot-pourri of thought, of free expression and belief. It was the dismal lack of righteousness in even the routine functions of modality that repulsed him. There wasn't even any greater good invovled. Doesn't such behaviour deserve punishement? He thought it did.
It got out of hand when his aims went beyond even his control. There was always wrong. He couldn't stop it all. 'It's being done to toughen you up boy- it's a cruel world out there' Why don't you understand that every coin has two damn sides. He will be ready to face the 'cruel' world, you cynical pragmatists . Except you have taught him that offence is the best defence. He will make his shield of cruelty his sword. Tonight we dine on self-annhilation.

What of virtues and values. How would he teach somebody the true essence of respect when he himself had lost faith in it. He hated giving up on people. Even when they let him fall. Awashed in misery and without company he would laugh to himself thinking that's what they all do- the people who live long. Then again he didn't want to live for too long.

It is scary.

He needs fiction to keep him going. Or he would just fall asleep. Forever. With dreams of the ideal man flying into a horizon. And such incomplete hazes of production used.

Here's a little something that kept Mr. Mandela going for 27 years of his life in prison-
Invictus by William Ernest Henley.

Somehow he will need to find a way to transform into reality.