04/06/2024
"I want to talk about everything with at least one person as I talk about things with myself." (Dostoevsky)
There is an innate desire in humans to be heard and understood at least once in their lives. They keep striving to find that ear and that mind that would listen and understand them. Some are lucky enough to find that, while others start using other means, such as art, as a substitute. All the characters and words you read in a book (especially classics) are sometimes the projections of the writer's own thoughts that they never got to tell someone. Being understood by readers helps them integrate those experiences into a coherent narrative, contributing to a stable sense of self. This narrative construction is crucial for personal meaning-making and psychological coherence. A person bows down to some deity in the hope that they will be listened to and understood, which helps them in reducing cognitive dissonance by aligning their internal beliefs and feelings with external validation.
Some face the wall and start spitting bitterness out like a ball hitting the wall, until they realize that walls don't reply back. So, they get up and start punching and hitting their head against the wall, hoping their head may break into two halves and solve all the puzzles. Some start playing with blades, hiding under their bedsheets, letting the blood flow and watching it, hoping that the flowing blood might take out the poison too. Some choose to walk, not like normal people, but as if they are dragging themselves like a co**se. They wait for the moment to fall to the ground after getting tired, hoping the earth might just swallow them. Some opt for sleep, with their pillow soaked by tears. All of this, just because they do not have someone who would listen.
But why this temptation? They expect people to approve of their ideas or at least help them make sense of what they think. They want to know if the ghosts and voices they heard last night are real or not. The other reason is that there are thousands of unspoken emotions, so they seek the one who wouldn’t just listen to normal talks they do, but their secrets without judging—the one where you can dump your sorrows, the one who will make it easy for you to live.
