THE ‘JANUS’ IN US!

As the years pass by, hair turn grey and limbs become weak there is a parallel life that surreptitiously grows stronger. The more the present reality envelops us in its fold; there is an unleashed yet latent force inside all of us that grows robust. This force is opposed to everything sane in our lives, and is truly free like the birds flying in the sky. Free from the shackles of convention, pristine like the clear blue sky, carefree like strong directionless wind infused with the heady fragrance of fresh flowers. A dream world in our subconscious mind sometimes grows so strong that it starts sneaking a peek into our normal daily structured lifestyle.

This tussle of the real and the unreal is a fact of life. Most of us put on the garb of reality and shove the unreal under the carpet and convince ourselves that it doesn't exist. The fact is that it is an intrinsic part of our life and stitched intricately in our being. Till the time we keep the unreal at bay, life seems smooth but there are times in life, when the unreal force falls on us like a tidal wave and tries to wash away whatever the reality had built. Some people call it “weaker moments” when you end up doing something which shatters the perfect structure built by the rational and disciplined ‘present’.

So in some ways it’s true to believe that all of us are convicts and in some way our hands are always tied. The part of us which is truly free is too untamed to be true. It does not fit in our social fabric and is so powerful that it carries with it the danger of devastation. So engulfed with fear we all try to keep that side of us at bay and put in place necessary checks and balances that give us a sense of security.

So a person can be carefree and cautious; wild and tamed; sensible and crazy. Life is like the two headed Janus. There is nothing like the dark side of human nature. There is nothing wrong with the latent force that resides in us and there is nothing wrong with our present either. So there are times in life when nothing is wrong or right. They are just two sides of a coin. The two faces all of us have.