“This is wrong.”
I thought I had purged my mind of my mother’s voice, yet her strident tones still echoed through my brain, muffled but not silenced. .
Brush your teeth, clean your room, go to bed, and other orders ingrained in my head during my childhood had ceased to resound through my skull, yet one phrase remained, preserved.
“This is wrong.”
Wrong means bad. Wrong means red X’s scattered across your test like confetti. Wrong means the hellfires of damnation, which I stopped believing in (along with God and heaven), but which still have the power to frighten me, like the chainsaw-wielding villain I saw on TV when I was six, who I knew wasn’t real, but was really cackling manically before me every time I shut my eyes.
“This is wrong.”
Off late, a whole new set of rights and wrongs are coming my way.
This time the choice isn't simple enough.
The concept of right and wrong was taught to us as kids, and was supposed to be kept in the mind before taking all decisions in life. A very simple thing, but i never knew while growing up i will forget the importance of asking myself if something do is the right thing to do or I'm doing it just because i want to do it.
A gradual change, imperceptible to the unperceptive, a change in lilt, in tone, in meaning.
A silenced tongue is wrong, not the feelings it might expound if freed.
A bound body is wrong, not the movements it may make unshackled.
Cloaking an atheist in the robes of a sister is wrong.
Hurting someone who loves you is wrong.
Giving up your self respect for anyone or anything, no matter how precious or "loved", is ..uhmm, well.. wrong!
The words have not changed; my conscience is preserved, the influence destroyed.
This is right.
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