"Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future”
-Oscar Wilde
We might profess our love for the Hero, but it is the
Villain we thrive on. We are, perhaps subconsciously, maybe even habitually,
more attached to the idea of an absolute, non-negotiable evil than we would
like to admit.
In our own little world, where a mirror is often our least
favourite accessory, the existence of the quintessential Villain validates us,
brings us closer to being the Hero. In our
hastiness of pigeonholing the world into good and evil, we forget to appreciate
that all of it, mostly is just grey. A black and white world is an utopia, an
elusive expectation. But, how else would we prove how white is our grey, unless
we subscribe to the idea of the existence of a black, of the blackest kind!
And hence, the anti-hero, you know, the one that gets it
wrong most of the times, the flawed one, the one that messes up, the black
sheep, if you will, needs to be an omnipresent frame of reference in our lives,
to prove to the world and as irony would have it, mostly to ourselves, how less
messed up, less flawed we are, how many
times we got it right to every time our black sheep faltered.
We like to cry foul to the mistakes of the black sheep so
that we can fool ourselves into believing how much closer to perfection we are.
Hanging on to the darkness in someone else’s character makes us seem fairer,
validates us, and makes it easier to gain rite of passage into the world’s clichéd
and I daresay, hypocritical mould of 'the
good and the proper'.
But really, could anyone be absolutely white, without the
slightest remnant of darkness? Can you, or anyone you know, rightfully claim to
have never done anything wrong?! Never hurt someone, knowingly or unknowingly,
broken a heart, upset a loved one, made a mistake, missed a step and by the
sheer instinct of survival grabbed someone else and took them down too….!?
We know the answer to that in all honesty, so tell me this,
why is it so difficult to give someone the benefit of doubt when we ourselves
are so tragically flawed? Why do we judge ourselves by our intentions and
everyone else by their actions? Why can’t we accept the good with the bad in
others as easily we do in ourselves? Why do we like to play victim of someone
else’s mistakes when we ourselves don’t like to take stock of every time we
hurt another person?
But ofcourse. No one takes note of the wrongdoings of the
wronged and what could be better than the blissfull secrecy of the curtain of other
people’s mistakes, to hide our own!
Bless Eve for eating the apple and thereby gifting us with a
delicious world full of possibilities ! Everytime another one of us comes into
this world, this beautifully broken world, we inherit an ocean of emotions and
characteristics and without classifying them into virtues and vices let our conscience
be our guiding light and not hold
against another their every wrong while we ourselves secretly expect forgiveness
from our victims.
Let's give the Villain a chance. He just might surprise us!
