big hearted me

Absence and lack of communication makes the heart idealize a person. This subconsciously twists your perception of them into thinking that they are something greater than they really are. They ain’t shit. They don’t care. And neither should you.

I realized the uselessness of this academic language when, at 21, I met a farmer from my father’s village in northern Pakistan who was more Marxist than most Marxists including myself without knowing who Marx or Engels was and who was far more aware of how true love is achieved without rummaging through the letters of Rilke, Kierkegaard, Barthes, Derrida, Kafka, Carson, Atwood, more combined; who knew the difference between good and bad and the grey area in between without having read Jung or Nietzsche; who could tell you why the laborer feels lonely without picking up a manifesto from Europe, and when he was done shaming me into self-reflection (something I thank him for), he simply asked: “So what is new?”