A Cross too heavy...

It is a curse I was born with. A Cross to carry for a lifetime. One would think that if the choice of carrying the Cross was in your hand, you would drop the Cross and run, run as far as you could and never look back. But that would kill something within you, would it not? Because you see, you were born to carry that Cross. It is both your enlightenment and your curse. It is as much a part of you as air you breathe in. But such a preoccupation with a particular thing which is exclusive to you brings a certain kind of loneliness along with it. You have to care for it, protect it all costs, even if it means you have to die a hundred deaths everyday, because your very survival depends on its well-being.

I am a believer in Darwin’s Theory of Evolution. And Darwin’s Theory says that every living being evolved in such a way that it was equipped with the most robust and practical tools for survival and all the useless, impractical or detrimental tools or habits were discouraged and thus lost along the way. Makes me wonder what practical purpose do emotions serve? Every human being I have interacted with who have this exceptionally heavy cross to carry at all times have been found complaining bitterly to its detrimental effect on their health and indeed, sanity. They live in mortal fear of someone trampling it at all times and guard it quite ferociously, lashing out angrily at anyone who dares hurt it. Indeed, such people have been branded as ‘Emotional Fools’ by their carefree and cheerful contemporaries, who are unable to decipher their wild and unpredictable reactions. A weird kind of loneliness, like I said.

But why the minority? Are they some freaks of nature who forgot to discard this detrimental habit somewhere down the evolution chain? And if they did forget, why cant they discard it now, when they are fully conscious of its side-effects to their general sanguity? Why do they spend their lives in endless quest to someone cursed similarly, someone who ‘understands’ them, shunning all others as heartless brutes?

I don’t know the answers, I am but another helpless member of this minority, a slave to the Cross. I am but young, yet feel so old…acutely aware of some strange secret I have discovered, by a powerful Telescope which is continuously focused inwards, by default tuned in to pick up the slightest disturbances, frantically signaling the mind to try and shut the heart, to prevent further damage. A furious tussle between the mind and heart follows, each trying to triumph over another. The mind enraged at its authority being questioned, the heart empowered by that secret it has discovered. But the result has been decided even before the battle began. For you see, the sanctity of the Cross is supreme, and the Cross lives in the heart. The poor heart wins…wins even as it loses.