The Curse Of Awareness inspired By The Journey Of Pushp Sirohi Poem by Pushp Sirohi

I was taught to chase the crowd,
to collect degrees, titles, and applause.
So I did.

I sat in classrooms,
walked through colleges,
crossed the halls of corporations,
and learned the language of success.

Yet every answer I found
gave birth to a deeper question.

People celebrated certainty.
I became curious.

People sought comfort.
I sought understanding.

People built identities.
I kept asking,
'Who is the one building them? '

The more I looked,
the less I belonged.

Not because the world rejected me,
but because I could no longer pretend
that masks were faces
and noise was wisdom.

I watched careers rise and fall.
I watched relationships begin and end.
I watched dreams arrive
wearing the clothes of disappointment.

And somewhere in that journey,
the observer inside me woke up.

He sat beneath a banyan tree,
walked beside a river,
listened to a child,
and learned from an elephant.

He discovered that awareness
is both a gift and a burden.

For once you see the game,
you cannot unsee it.

Once you hear the silence,
the noise no longer satisfies.

Once you meet yourself,
the crowd feels strangely distant.

So I wrote.

Not because I had answers,
but because questions refused to leave me alone.

Book after book,
page after page,
I left footprints for fellow travelers.

Some called it philosophy.
Some called it psychology.
Some called it confusion.

I called it honesty.

And if awareness is a curse,
then perhaps it is also a blessing.

For it took away my certainty,
but gave me wonder.

It took away my belonging,
but gave me freedom.

It took away the crowd,
but brought me home.

And home, I learned,
was never a place.

It was the courage
to see clearly
and remain kind.