Untouchable
When you mention the word “untouchable”, people think primarily of two kinds:
Those who are above the law and therefore cannot be touched by it and anyone who enforces it. Some politicians, heads of states, heads of companies, dangerous gangsters, and the likes of worldly powerful people.
The cast of the untouchables in India. A group of humans that no one can physically touch except the people of the same cast. Even as they die on the sidewalk, they lay there untouched, until they are picked up by their kind.
In this article, neither of these two meanings is important. Something else, and different is meant here. The most powerful kind of untouchability is what I would like to explore.
Every destination has multiple journeys leading to it, and typically one of these journeys is the shortest and therefore the denser in discovery, learning and self-evolution. I am inviting you to follow one of these shorter journeys. I am offering you the opportunity to discover the way to a different kind of untouchability; not the one anchored in the (right or wrong) repulsion or fear you inspire in people. I am giving you my life’s learnings. Maybe this time, for a change, you will accelerate your path to a destination already reached by someone else before you.
You are touchable when other people’s words, acts and behaviors affect you. Positively or negatively.
When you are touched by the genuine love and care of someone, you feel good, blessed and you want this moment to last forever. This is quite normal. That’s the way it is supposed to be. That is what makes life worth living. Isn’t it? You let yourself go in the tenderness of their words, you bathe is the softness of their caresses, and you feel safe when they are around you. You want to be touched again and again by this gift of life. Everything seems in its right place. Everything makes sense exactly the way it is. It is not heaven, where nothing goes wrong, but the small disturbances feel temporary. Any irritation, happening in the moment, doesn’t cloud the horizon of your beautiful vision. You are touched by the grace of life. You feel good. You feel so good that you keep repeating to yourself, it is too good to be true.
Your journey could end here. You could live all your life, touchable and touched by the sweet feeling of an ever-giving love. The kind that listens carefully, understands what others don’t, gives what others won’t, and receives gratefully, making you want to give more than you are getting. You could … but you can’t. You can’t, simply because your intuition was right, it is too good to be true!
When your chest is wide open, and your soul is naked. When you are feeling every touch and living every moment. When everything is flowing gently in a sea of peace and happiness. There will come a day where another reality catches up to you and makes you suffer!
People you trust betray you. People you love disrespect you. People you care about ignore you. People you seek flee you. People you want united disperse. People you value disappoint you. You lose control of your journey. The foundations crumble. The utter truths you believe in become confused. You don’t understand. You think harder, you dig deeper, and then some strong people start to look weak, other intelligent ones seem stupid, the ones believed to be wise behave foolishly, the loving people act meanly. All around you changes very fast…
Among this turbulence, you lose sight of the enchanting horizon. In this whirlwind of unexpected ugliness, you find yourself tainted by it. As everything breaks down around you, you are unable to pick up all the pieces. When reason leaves the ones you care about, and madness takes its place, you think you are the odd one. When the egos reign supreme, your feel you lost your battle, and maybe the war. At that point of the journey you are definitely touched, and you are absolutely touchable.
This is where things might end. And, in some rare occasions, this is where real things could start.
If this were the end, then maybe this is what luck decided to give you from this life. Remember the good days and try to forget the present. Whatever remains carved on your soul from these dark moments will be your cross to carry as silently as your courage allows you and as long as your strength enables you.
If it were not the end, then you start picking up the pieces, painfully. You begin reconstructing your new life. And in this exact moment, the most important part of what comes next is decided. More of the same journey or a different one? More of the same people or different ones? More of the same conversations or different ones? More of the same stories or different ones? More lies? More make belief? More nothingness? More mediocrity?
More of the same will surely lead you to the same end. It could be your choice. An eternal loop of illusionary happiness and shallow joys, with fake and mediocre people.
You could also choose to follow a different journey. Without illusionary dreams, without hallucinatory hopes, without false happiness or short-lived joys, but with a profound meaning for everything you believe in and a fundamental trust in everyone you surround yourself with. Authenticity takes center stage in your new journey and egocentrism becomes the determining trait by which you exclude people from it. You always have the choice and every choice has its price and its consequences.
When you start your new and different journey, you don’t realize it at first. With time, with your maniacal focus on the deep and authentic meaning you attach to everything and with your relentless search for loyalty and generosity in the people around you, you start to let go many of your futile habits, useless attachments, unreliable, ungraceful and ungrateful people. As you do this, the number of human beings around you start to shrink more rapidly than you ever thought possible. After a while, whomever is left in your life and the new people you added along the way, form your new and different life, where you start to feel stronger, tougher, more resilient, better armed. Whoever attempts to harm you, outside of that new circle, looks ridiculous in your eyes. The joke is on them. The effort they deploy to touch your soul is their time wasted on a futile and fruitless enterprise. You are immune to their mediocrity. You are untouched by their ignorance. Their stupidity puts a big smile on your face. You have become UNTOUCHABLE!
At some point, they notice it. They feel your untouchability. It makes them furious. But there is nothing you could do to help them. Actually, there is nothing you would do to help them. Their world becomes unknown to you. They see you, want to touch you, but you don’t see them, nor feel them. They continue their lives and cease to exist in yours!
To you, they have become INVISIBLE. To them, you have become UNTOUCHABLE.