View from the sidewalk

By the time you were born, much had already been decided – The names of places. The colour of things. The names of colours. (Why is red called red and not ‘pefit’?) The twenty six letters. And their symbols. The seven musical notes. And their sounds. The Charter, The Constitution, The Act and The Law. The code of ethics. The rules of grammar. The grammar of love. The figures of speech. The metaphors of life. The aesthetics of realism. That E is equal to mc². The demand and supply theory. The indifference curve. Things that are good for us. Things that are bad for them. The capital of Denmark. History. Pronunciation. Little-known worldviews…

The answers to the big questions.

You arrived in a perfectly baked world. And then as you grew up, you found out how imperfect it is, birthday by birthday, bruise by bruise, promotion by promotion. However, in this imperfection lies our redemption. It comes not from where we align ourselves, or the choices we make from among the universe of things that have been pre-decided for us. It comes from what we do with them.

What will you give the world?

A trail of words?
Sepia toned photographs?
A last name?
A book?
Or a song?
A path-breaking research paper?

Or maybe, the 27th letter of the alphabet?