Puppeteers

Only that what I am meant to play with are real people.

I don't like being called a puppeteer, I don't like to consider myself one; but there are few choices in life that I have been afforded. Deciding what I can do and what I can't is not one of them. It is ironic in its own quaint way; on the one hand I claim that I don't like it when people call me a puppeteer, and on the other hand, I should admit that there is little control over the choices that I make. It is not a sudden realization that has dawned on me as I complete a quarter of my life. It was always so, and, as a matter of fact, I had enjoyed it. Everyone would enjoy feeling that bit of superiority over things that have little say in their actions; what people do not enjoy is taking responsibility about the same. That I no longer desire it is what is sudden. It is strange how bubbles burst - quite the same magical way that we conjure up alternate realities, transitioning from being to nothingness in the snap of a second. But we are used to it; we are used to getting over such things. What proves a little more difficult is reason, for it takes time to create one, and even longer to come to terms with one. As a puppeteer, I would not really mind fiddling around with the strings, when I am afforded the conscience to overlook the fate of one of the shows, should the strings break. Much to my chagrin, I am not. 

I never thought I had a world revolving around me, that the gravity of my existence had, until now, kept many other lives in a constant, almost dispassionate, orbit, without even bothering to let me know. Existence is not merely being, but a cognizance of what it brings along with itself. That I exist is a testimony to the fact that there are many things, many lives, adding meaning to my existence, some to the extent of, perhaps, being the driving force behind it. However, I must also acknowledge, the sooner the better for me, that there is a certain other being that draws the same vitality from my existence. Whether it would be in the form of drawing life from me, or sustaining my life, becomes of little importance then. When I start lending meaning to more lives than mine, I want to take a back seat and introspect. 

If, for some selfish reason of my own, I disregard what everything else is, I choose be an outlaw, which is fine if there are mechanisms to ensure that everything falls in place. But in a real world, we trade order for chaos. Everyone has a different meaning of order, which, again, is fine, so long as it does not absolve itself of an awareness of the ecosystem. The fixation with a certain constant, and the submission to / dependence on its causal forces creates an impasse, which, from its very core, opposes an evolution. I do not intend to generalize, but I wish we let things take their natural course more often. At least we would have been able to see what a dystopian world would be like. But somewhere in the quest of enforcing reason into what would otherwise seem perfectly reasonable, we get stranded between what could have been and what should be, motionless.  

Who the puppet is, or should be, and who the puppeteer is, or should be, is then a question of megalithic proportions. What I know is that being either of them is a sorry plight.