Next time when someone tells you what a Giraffe sounds like. Don’t trust your friend, visit the zoo. Watch around, learn from others experiences too but not their beliefs.
As a kid I asked my father, why should I not fear ghosts? He said since you have never seen one, there is no reason to fear. They simply don’t exist, and perchance if you find one, tell it about your father. His confidence was enough to shoo away all my fears but there was a subconscious lesson he taught me that day. He taught me to believe only what I can see. When I look back today I think that lesson got sunk somewhere only to rise up again today when I saw the movie, ‘Ankhon Dekhi’.
I’ll be honest, there was a reason that lesson could not float. I believed what made my life easy and simple, and not what I saw and understood. I believed because that gave me an illusion to live with. That I know how things work. That I know that lions roar. That I know how it feels when the cold wind blows on your face. That I know how revolutions end. That I know how miserable life is. That I know there can never be two consecutive nights. That I know everything will work out. That I know there will be another day.
I knew nothing. I believed everything. It wasn’t my truth that I was living with but the truth I was told and I chose to believe. There is a lie in believe, do you know why? Because when you start believing, you stop questioning. When you stop questioning, there are no answers. When there are no answers, there is silence. There is nothing to find, know, and learn. Since you believe in everything; there is nothing to go out and experience. Isn’t such a life only a lie? Aren’t we all living such a life?
I cannot say that for you, because I don’t know you. That would be believing. I want to question. I want to reason. I want to experience it. What happens if we all stop believing?
Next time when someone tells you what a Giraffe sounds like. Don’t trust your friend, visit the zoo. Watch around, learn from others experiences too but not their beliefs. Because belief is a lie we tell ourselves to comfort. Believe what you see and experience for yourself and not others. Let them have their own experiences, their own beliefs, their own truths. Let them find a perfect shoe for themselves and you find one for yourself.
Be ready to be mocked and disdained because they won’t like it when you don’t believe in things as they do. Try being a misfit for a while and believe me (please don’t) they won’t be able to ignore you. After all, hasn’t this world been shaped by non-believers? Gallio never believed the earth was flat. Jobs never believed that computers were only meant for businesses. Elon never believed that humans are only meant to live on earth. What is stopping you from not believing? It’s fear. Fear of not knowing. Fear of being in the dark. Fear to reason everything up from first principles. Give away this fear and stop believing, and start experiencing. There are no ghosts.
Ankhon Dekhi is one such soul-stirring story of a man who decides to believe only what he has seen. Although ridiculed by the family and friends he holds his ground in his pursuit to experience what he hasn’t seen. He finds his own beliefs and steps into his own shoes. The movie starts with the protagonist narrating about him living his dream. He’s flying. He can feel the wind blowing on his face. He takes us to the flashback to tell his tale. How he gave upon believing what he hasn’t seen. Highly inspirational flick or was it? Because the movie ends with him jumping off from a cliff.
Don’t believe me, just watch the movie.