Answer, must you?

Facebook asks me "what's on your mind?" It's one question I must never answer. 

What's on my mind should stay there unless it is to spread constructive rejuvenation to mankind. Countries, societies, families are at war with each other, all based on this one suspicion-minting rhetoric "What's on your mind?"

It is a question that does not solicit real answers. The answer to it is, in fact, unknown. Therefore, it is a dangerous question. A question, which if unanswered, will make one man suppose the intention of another; if answered will be lost in translation; if debated, will make us fight one another based on our own conviction. It will start the social media bids for likes, personal attacks, loud arguments. An answer that will make us stick labels on people based on what we make out of their nationality, caste, region, community, religion, gender or anything else that can widen the rift between societies - leftist, rightist, democrat, republican, separatist, nationalist, feminist, sexist, racist, even sadist for God's sake! All are our perception. And if we answer, it will create a non-constructive storm nevertheless.

Yet we love to answer. Answer an unasked question. And let it be known. Because we must subscribe to a narrative. A narrative that we never built in the first place. We only cherry-picked from history written by someone else, a history that chronicles a few events and a few perspectives, but pretends to be complete. We glorify Hitler or Gandhi, whoever feels comfortable, in hindsight though. We have but limited access to either's lifetimes. Limited access, because we didn't live it, did we? We heard through generational Chinese whispers what may have happened back then. And it must have been true, as betold, we assume. What if by subscribing to others narratives we are endorsing Gandhis and Hitlers of today?  Whose Christ, Mohammad or Krishna were they anyway? Who handed them down to us?

We never stop to think of it that way. We never cut some slack to our misgivings for any narrative by asking ourselves one important question "is it possible to know the complete truth? Do we know completely what was on their minds?" That introspection of our own conviction is uncomfortable. We have access to information. We are smart. Smarter is the technology that finishes our sentences for us. As if humans were not doing that already. Combining information used to be knowledge. Now it is an entire narrative, forcefully complete on its own. But what of that information which was left out, which we didn't seek to receive, which we didn't care to listen to, which we trampled over because it did not feed into our narrative?

Your fact is factual. His fact is factual. Her fact is factual too. But we each believe in our facts so hard that we forget that we are still bereft of some of their facts, whom we refused to listen to. And therefore, the truth as we know it, cannot be absolute. So my truth is as incomplete as yours. It is only a set of facts,  surrounded by some perspectives, cemented by my beliefs and assumptions, waiting to be sequenced by my ego.

So much of war could have been saved if only we stopped asking that question - "What's on your mind?" And, instead checked in with ourselves and sought, "Whose Karma am I subscribing to?" Or we disruptively, rebelliously woke up one morning with "What am I going to build today?"