Chp 53. Skeletons in the Cupboard

I am no fan of the Spice girls (eeeeww), but long long time ago, when my generation first started partying, the hit songs on the boogie floor those days were songs like “Be my lover”, Backstreet boys’ “Get down” and Spice Girl’s “Wannabe”. Hence the lyrics of that particular song kinda stuck to my head. “If you want my future, forget my past”.

Man, how true is this. Think about it, it’s much deeper than you think.

How many times have we judged someone solely on the basis of his/her past? How many times have we said “Oh she used to sleep around back in school, don’t ever get involved with her?” or “Him? He was into LSD n all sort of crazy stuff man while we were slogging for our publics exam, don’t ever trust him”.

Everybody change. That’s what the Human life cycle is all about. But why does our perception about a person we’ve known before seems so hard to change?

When we were young, our hearts were restless and wild. We wanted to experiment on all sort of crazy stuff, after all, that’s what youth is all about. What is youth without curiosity? It would be just a mundane boring dullsville occupied by nerds and geeks of all ages. I’m sure when you were young you must have taken at least a drag from that magical ciggaweed, downed a couple of sleeping pills or painkillers, drank a bottle of cough syrup etc just to see what’s it like, or even switched to higher forms of synthetic or street drugs. The thing is, most of us have been through all these, either in our school or college days. Curiosity is more to blame rather than foolishness. And this is what life is all about.

Recently, a certain celebrity from my community has been ostracized for a certain video that surfaced in public. In that video, she was bare bodied, and yeah, I’m sure every up-to-dated mizo (including me) have downloaded her clip from the net. Sure some of us drooled, while others laughed. But coming back to reality, I’m sure most of us don’t think she deserves to be kicked out from her community. Yeah her boyfren dumped her and yeah her employers fired her. The former I can somewhat understand. I mean, here is a guy who is deeply in love with her and completely honest with her while she goes around shooting sleazy videos behind his back. Must be pretty embarrassing for him. And about her getting fired from her job, well, I guess her employers simply wanted to avoid a controversy. But what rights do the local YMA (read my previous post on YMA, the so called Young Mizo Association) have, to kick her out from her locality? Utter bullshit. This poor girl has now found a shelter in the local Salvation Army Church. Rejected by her own flesh n blood, all she can think of now is an uncertain future.

It is incidents like this that makes my blood simmer slowly. We call ourselves a complete Christian state, the last bastion of Christianity, and yet when it comes to understanding and forgiveness, I’ve never seen anyone more hypocritical than these. How different are we from the Talibans or the communists of the Forbidden City? Jesus preached about showing the other cheek while some of our Church leaders stress on an eye for an eye. Shame on us.

But enough on the religious doctrine of our current system for now. Right now I would like to revert back to what I initially meant to talk about: The strength to trust someone with a clouded past.

At one of the mizo forums where I actively participate, one mizo dude (or dudette) posted that my comments were indeed sympathetic, but in real life, am I ready to do the same thing? Practice what you preach was what she really meant to say. This made me think a lot. Yes, would I be ready to accept anyone regardless of their dark past? It’s really easy to say it out on paper that true love knows no past or mistakes. But just take a moment off and think deeply. The love of your life used to be a hooker before. Will you marry her?

Dilemma. I guess I’ll never know since I’ve never come across anything like that in my life. But right now, all I can do is speak out to the person that what’s past is the past and what one should really concentrate on is the future.

Forget the Past. Build your future.