When I was a little kid, I had a small notebook. I used to write my emotions there. I used to write because I had no one to talk. So I found my solace in my notebook. I found myself as my companion. That was the beginning of my healthy intellectual growth or the beginning of being non-conformist.
My whole life I have just wanted to be like myself. And surprisingly I have found wherever you live in this world, you would be encouraged to be anything but one thing, that’s being your own self. The society will do everything to stop you from being yourself. It is a fight between individual existence and society. Asking the question ‘who am I?’ is inappropriate in social codebook. Ask any random person walking in the street, who are they? They would come with their names, many of them would add their nationality, some people would add their religion before nationality. In a close friendship, you would get to know, they are someone's father, mother, wife, husband, girlfriend, boyfriend, daughter, son and so on. After all these replies, if you are still curious to know who they are, most of the people would reply with a deep surprize in their eyes. We live in a world, where very few creates their identity, rather identity is created by the society.
‘Who am I?’, this is the first valid question I had asked myself when I was a 14 years old kid. I should say I dared to ask that to myself. Now I know, that single question made me a social outcast today. That single question cost me all of my intimate familial relationships. The moment my society learned about my question, I have become a unique victim of the society. My father who raised me as an individual, inspired my intellectual growth as an individual, he asked, do you question my relationship with you? "The moment you questioned the existence of my god, I have become no one of you." He failed to see the father-daughter relationship between him and me while I rejected the imagination of God. I lost my first and foremost social relationship to that single question. Others denied me even earlier, even before knowing my question, at the very moment they knew I can ask question. I am just a no one in the social context of the world. But at the end, I am proud to be someone to myself. Someone who is good without god, being good without a god is so natural, I am happy that I can feel it.
And yet, some loved me just as a human being, loved me seeing that human does not need god to be naturally good. Empathy and goodness is in our DNA, we evolved over millions of years to be good.
And yet, some loved me just as a human being, loved me seeing that human does not need god to be naturally good. Empathy and goodness is in our DNA, we evolved over millions of years to be good.
University of Maryland, Mckeldin Library,
College Park, Maryland
4th March, 2016
