The man who wanted to live

He was standing in the criminal's box in the packed courtroom. All eyes were on him. He had been charged by the government of the state for defying the rules of the society and had become an outcast.

He was defending his case himself. His defence lawyer had backed out. The prosecution cried, 'What gives you the right to think that you are right? What is it that you fight for?'

"I fight for my own happiness. What makes you think that you are right? I don't accept your rules. I don't accept anybody's rules until they agree with my sense of reason and logic.  By what standards do you judge your life and by what standards do you judge anybody else's life?" he hollered.

There were people who looked aghast at the courage and the fearlessness of the man in the box. They were taught that he was to be hated and that he deserved the hatred. Nobody had any right to go against the tide. Nobody had any right to believe in what he thought been right. It was a collective society and every belief was meant to be a collective belief. 

The room was silent as he continued. 

"In fact, I don't understand what do you live for? By the way, you aren't even living. You are just surviving. You go from one day to another having passed through it. You stay in painful relationships fearing what society would think of you otherwise. You do work you have no interest in because you want to survive.

You know what? I don't what to survive. I either want to live or to die. I don't want to survive. Not anymore. Animals are born to survive. They get up in the morning thinking of nothing but getting enough food to survive. They exist to survive. I am not an animal. I am a human. I exist to live."

The public prosecutor who had been flabbergasted by this outburst of an accused tried to regain his calm and said,    

"That's all too easy to say. You kid yourself. You foolish idealist! You dumb utopian! We also need to survive. We need to compromise with life and make sacrifices for others. We have to do things even if we don't like them. That is not easy either." 

"By whose standards? When you do things you don't like, you kill yourself everyday and kill any chance to really become who you are or who you ought to be. You fake everything to sustain your fake sense of existence. You justify the things that cause pain and eulogize them rather than criticize them. You lack the courage to speak up or it will jeopardize your survival."

"So you mean you are not scared?" refuted the prosecutor.

"No. I am not. Not now. Not anymore. I am willing to put my life at stake to stand by my convictions."

Nobody said anything. It did not matter anymore. It did not matter what the judge announced as the punishment for the criminal or if he was exonerated. There stood a man who was willing to die for his convictions. There stood a man who was willing to live or die.

There stood a fearless man who wanted to live for his happiness and was willing to put his life at stake for it. 

The man was acquitted. He was set free to live or die. It did not matter if he lived or died.

What did matter was what he was fighting for. He fought for his own happiness.