The Shameful Ways of the World

The first time you experience shame, it’s an all-consuming fire. The cold sweat beads on the nape of your neck, the sickly warmth flows through your forehead and the heaving breaths squeeze through a hollow chest. No I’m not describing a panic attack or fever, but the after effects of doing committing an unimaginably abject crime. Not it doesn’t need to be something terrible, per say, it’s just the unfathomability of having done something even remotely like that. You feel the ringing in your ears. The deed is done…     you can’t go back now. You can’t even walk without letting your head hang. You can’t face the world. You can’t.

So you go back home and you resort to some fastidious little job or immerse yourself in an almost perfunctory job. You crave normalcy. You crave an escape from the sardonic voices in your head.

And then, bit by bit, day by day, the feeling of shame lessens, however painfully. With this decreasing shame comes a sense of acceptance. Yes, I picked up that piece of jewelry without paying for it. So I just slept with that guy who’s my boyfriend’s friend. Big deal. Yeah, I took a little cash from my friend’s wallet. Screw it, you say, it’s all okay. I’ve done it once so what’s the harm in doing it again. I never got caught.

And then you wake up one day having no clue about how you ended up that way. And you look back and see a different life. If the old you met the new you, recognizing yourself would be an impossibility. Your life lies in shambles as you look around you and fail to realize how things spiraled this out of control. And then shame returns, for one final visit.

Love is a losing game.

Love. A four lettered single syllable word with enough power to bring down empires. Once a burning desire kept to a simmering flame, love was an emotion much controlled and manipulated, especially in the presence of another, or in a crowd. With changing times came developments in the intensity of human relationships and love finally found free expression and acceptance in public. But somewhere down the line, love has become something lesser, something much darker than what it was supposed to be. Advertised as a deep, moving emotion, love barely holds a place in people’s lives anymore.

At present there are people who would more readily enter into a one-night-only show rather than sign up for the entire production. From Hollywood movies, one can easily figure out the reason behind this trend, after all who doesn’t want to be more like the Americans right? Of course, where love is degraded to a base, carnal sensation, it is also elevated to an almost poetic rendition of the most beautiful feeling on this earth and there seems to be a ray of light for everyone because, well, even Rihanna found love in a hopeless place or something like that, didn’t she?

Love means different things to different people, but all that really matters is that you have someone who wishes to be with you, for better or for worse. That is all anyone wants at the end of the day isn't it… to feel like they belong, like there is someone out there who cares, cares enough to fight wars, to wait for years on end, to give up on the world’s riches. That’s what anyone has ever read about and heard of. No one wants to talk about the one that got away, the one that got left behind. I’d once read somewhere that when people hear good music, it makes them homesick for something they never had, and never will have. That’s what love is about. That’s all there is to it. We imagine this concept of True Love and just white knuckle onto it because when the morning comes and when the dream is dispelled, all we can do is start another day looking for somebody to love.

Maybe there is no love left in the world. It’s all just a gimmick by the media, the malls. Love is a brand name and the fools it’s ambassadors. Maybe it’s all supposed to be a part of life, something we’re never really aware of but always consumed in. Maybe it’s just another of god’s practical jokes on humans. Who the hell knows…