What is your identity? Who are you? Are you the nice guy? Are you the joker of the group? The funny one? The one with all responsibilities? Are you the person who helps strangers on the street and feels really good about it? Does it make you feel you are better than the rest of them? Are you the helper? The guy who provides? The guy who just minds his own business and wants to be left alone? The guy who wants to be liked and be everyone’s favorite? The perfectionist? The one with best grades? The one on the back bench? Which one are you? I am sure you must associate yourself with some of them.
On a fine winter afternoon with the sun shining down on us and a mild breeze stroking our faces, if I sit down with you with some coffee and a lot of spare time and plead you to narrate your life story, and after much reluctance you agree, will you not be the protagonist of that story? You will laugh and say that it’s your story and it’s only fair that you are the hero of the story. There are so many characters in your story and your story has crossed its path with so many other stories. Your character has mixed and mingled with so many characters. Influenced so many characters. Touched so many. There is a story somewhere, maybe untold, maybe told in a different form where you have crossed path with a character and have written a chapter along with them. Tell me, if on a fine winter afternoon with the sun shining down and a mild breeze sweeping away time, I sit down with that character and ask him to narrate their story, will you still be the main character? No, not for the entire story, of course, I learned my lesson there, but for the part when you are in the limelight in their story. Okay, it is still their story. But what if I tell you that you are a villain? You are a monster in their story. Probably the worst monster they have ever come across. Explain to me, or to yourself, how did YOU, the main character and the person who has always tried to do the right thing, suddenly become one of the worst monster someone has ever seen in their life? And then when I come back to your story you turn back to a saint again? How are you the same person who is a hero, a helper, a caring and empathetic human but at the same time are also a villain, a cunning and selfish human who is at the bottom of somebody’s dark pit of despicable people. So once again, I ask you: What is your identity? Who are you?