DOES NOBODY UNDERSTAND...

To

Anyone interested in making an entry into the world

“Does nobody understand?” 

These were the last words of author James Joyce. They were simple, they were deep and they were profound. You could twist them this way and that. But they were most certainly not pointing to a question. I refuse to believe that it was a mere question, that you could trivialise these words in that manner, no matter how you chose to interpret them. 

I see a different kind of affirmation here—a realisation.

It is hiding in plain sight, underneath the translucent words.

This is a strange world, you see, where we hand over the keys of our lives to someone else. So much so that everybody can peer in through the windows and decide on whom we should love, and how much. Everybody but ourselves, that is.

They choose for you “who” you must love. Can you love a woman the same as a man? Can you even love yourself the way you really want to? Who is to explain? Everyone but you will have an answer to that. 

By nature, human beings are strange creatures. We make our own laws and forget to believe in them. That is why there are neat little tags to identify emotions—an unusual homosexual homo sapien, a normal heterosexual male, a lesbian female, a confused bi-sexual etc. There are laws to legalize same-sex marriages because while others’ are made in heaven, these are not. A piece of paper decides whether your love is valid. And in a world where a piece of paper comes above love, you would do well not to become overambitious in your pursuit of this strange emotion.

It is all a charade, a desperate attempt to categorise what cannot be understood in entirety.

Don’t bother to love at all, if you think that your love is not of the right variety. Don’t bother to fall in love until you’ve understood the rules of the game. Be very sure that you are a man, or a woman as the case may be, first and foremost. If you’re not sure you cannot proceed. Once this hurdle is cleared, proceed to love the right person, namely, someone from the opposite sex.

There should have been a checklist for this.

Men can kill for the right kind of love. You can be killed if it’s the wrong kind.

But look at the irony of it all, won’t you. 

Who is they? Who made the rules, and now stops us from being ourselves? Who made the rules and who punishes the trespassers?

“Who is they?” is a very valid question. 

Because it is us. 

We are the traps and we are its victims too. We hurt ourselves until our laws of love become meaningless. The human race, as glorious as it stands, is very effective in pulling its own strings. 

Now if we were to go back to James Joyce and his last words, you would “understand”.

You would know that it is pointless to put his words in that order to ask a silly question, a mere trifle. It is more of a realisation that sometimes, indeed, “nobody” understands because they don’t want to. The onus is upon you to choose your battles carefully. In order to survive, you must learn the rules of the game of loving early on. Either that, or you prepare to die.

Unfortunately for you, the game begins at birth. 

Yours truly