In the search of myself........ My greatest Fear

Topic of the day is greatest fear. I was scared of snakes, dogs and even cats since i was a kid. I was scared of my mom, because she used to beat me thoroughly when i did something wrong. But none of the above is my greatest fears.

Fear loosing my virtual face has been my greatest fear.

It needs a thorough explanation to explain this fear. I can recollect vague memories of my childhood, from when i was very young may be 3 or 4 years old. My grand mom used to teach me many songs, poems etc. And she used to make me perform them in front her friends. And her friends used to like me and appreciate me. This was my first taste of approval.

During my schooling i was the topper of the class, and was recognized by the entire school as an exceptional student. (Most of my teachers at that time, remember my name and details till now). At that time i enjoyed all this recognition and approval. This unanimous recognition and approval continued until my intermediate. But during my intermediate I was not very happy with this recognition, felt it like a burden many times. This recognition i have experienced for 15 continuous years has affected my personality and behavioral traits. At this point of my life, i was continuously satisfying society. Every minute of my life i was trying to satisfy others around me. I was under continuous fear that i might loose my virtual face, if i do something wrong.

I came to Hyderabad for engineering. This was the golden phase of my academic life. Nobody knew me; no one had an expectation on me except the people who knew me earlier. I started sitting in the last benches, i started bunking classes, i stopped preparing for internal exams, but despite of all this i made sure these things don’t affect my marks in the final exams. This i call as first taste of freedom.

During engineering second or third year sometime, I went to nithin's house one day. He used have a dog named boxy or something (this was a wonderful dog). That day he was training his dog. He said 'sit-down', the dog sat down; he went to the dog, patted him and acknowledged him by saying 'good boy', 'good boy'.

That was one hell of an incident in my life. I could clearly see the dog within me. The society wanted me to sit-down, i did, and i was approved and praised as a good boy. So until that point of time what i was doing is nothing but satisfying society for its approval, for its recognition. I never did anything wrong to keep up my image. Even if i had done something against the will of the society, i carefully concealed it to keep up my face. I was disgusted with myself at that point of time. I started questioning the authority of everyone on me. I have started smoking, drinking almost everything condemned by the society. Most of you have experienced my stubborn nature during this period.

Now i don’t claim that i am perfect; but earlier i was a beggar. I was begging for recognition, begging for approval, begging for praising. I have made my choice; i prefer to be a stray dog with freedom, than being a well trained choice-less pet dog.

Even now, every day of life I do many things to protect my virtual image. But at least here, I don’t want to keep up my virtual face; I will be myself, whatever the consequences are…..

Fear loosing my virtual face has been my greatest fear.
But living to protect a virtual face is a self imposed curse.

And finally the reason i write all these things down is not to unveil the writer within me, but to unveil myself because its too suffocating.