Being Davy Jones

A light-snot-green coloured face full of tentacles, neither living nor dead, cursed to exist forever—that is the devil of the sea, Davy Jones. Those of you who have seen the movie, The Pirates of the Caribbean, would know what I am talking about. But the question is why am I talking about it? What is the relevance of a mythical character from another time, in our world today?

Well, there is. You see, whether it was “Long, long ago”, the Victorian times, or the Stone Age, there was and there always will be the human emotion which people call love. Every fairy-tale that we have read, every story of crime, every war, every epic has the central theme as love. The love could be for various things—material or otherwise; but more often than not, it’s the romantic kind. And that kind is the most dangerous. Davy Jones, like a lot of us, learnt the same. But while lesser mortals like us tried to get over it (only to fall again in its trap later), Davy Jones came up with the most brilliant idea. He cut out his heart, placed the still beating heart in an iron chest, locked it up. And put it in a place far far away, where he could never reach. Now that’s a plan.

I think this is the best way to survive in this world. I am sure all of us, at some point, have been hurt, betrayed, and left alone. If you don’t have a heart, you will never be heart-broken. You needn’t kill yourself. You just need to kill the cause of all sorrows—your heart. Take it out and keep it away from yourself.

(Warning: You are not in a fable, so don’t try to carve out your heart with a knife; you need to do it metaphorically.) Lock your heart away in a heavy iron chest so that even you cannot hear it beating. Forget that there exists something in the world called love or warmth, friendship, care (all are manifestations of the same evil). You need to be cold and unfeeling. Achieve heartlessness. Neither living, nor dead. No wants or desires, no hopes or dreams, no wishes and no fears. That is how you should exist in this world. Because that is the only way you can survive. Just like the immortal Davy Jones.