What You Don't Know Can't Kill You... Just Dae Play!😪

_{Ahmed Adly}

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There is this saying that what you don’t know can’t hurt you. Of course, there are instances where things you do not know will definitely kill you, and the only way to avoid such things will be by actually knowing them. But that is not what I’m here for today.

There are actually some things that as long as you don’t know about them, will never hurt you. Hell, even if you do know about them, you might find it difficult to treat them the same way others do. And this is people who have been more exposed to it than you.

A classic example of this can be found in the Harry Potter book series where the wizards and witches are so terrified of Voldemort that they are even scared of saying his name. Even his closest followers do not call him by his name, they address him as the Dark Lord while every other person who is scared of him simply calls him He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. If for some reason, his real name is uttered in a gathering of wizards, everyone would feel sudden fear as if he was going to appear and kill them all. That was just how terrified they were of him.

And then, in comes Harry Potter. He lived all his life as a muggle (human without magic) with no idea of the wizarding world. Only to find out he defeated the most powerful sorcerer when he was just a baby!

_{Dzenina Lukac}

Now, Harry didn’t have the same upbringing as others, so he was not scared at all of Voldemort. He didn’t get why people were so terrified of the name, and we could see that every time he referred to the Dark Lord, he referred to him by his name. Characters like Ron that grew up hearing about the scary things Voldemort did, were the ones most terrified of him. But then, Hermione was a muggle-born, but she was also an avid reader and she knew all about Voldemort even before she set foot in the school. The amount of fear these three sets of people had for the Dark Lord was different and it all had to do with knowledge.

Enough about fiction though, let me bring it closer to home.

Imagine someone bought a cemetery and decided to build a block of flats on it and then rent it out to the public. Do you think anyone would take up residence there? It’s highly unlikely because no one wants to be living over the corpses of dozens of people.

But then, let’s say because the rent is cheap some families decided to take the risk. How do you imagine life there would be? They will definitely believe the house is haunted. Every sound would be jumped at, every silence would be questioned. If their child falls sick, they will wonder if it’s the ghost of one of the buried. And if someone dies mysteriously, it will definitely be the handwork of the dead.

It won’t matter if there are perfectly logical explanations for all these, as long as they are living on top of a cemetery, they believe they know the source of their problem.

_{Rıfat Gadimov}

Now, let’s say a hundred years pass by. The landlord’s son renovates the house and opens it to the public for rent again. Note that by this time, not many people know the land was a cemetery. Most of the current generation that grew up in that area have always seen that house there, so there was nothing weird about any of it.

So, I ask, how do you think the lives of the new tenants will be compared to the tenants of a hundred years back?

If the new tenants don’t know they are living on the bones of long-dead people, they will seek actual solutions to their problems and not blame it on supernatural forces. Like ghosts. If they hear a sudden noise, it’s probably the gust of wind slamming the door shut. If the house is too quiet, they would suspect their children are up to something. If they fall sick or die mysteriously, they will know where to go to get answers.

But they would never suspect the innocent dead.

So now, can you see where I am going with all these?

If you have no idea about something, it will be impossible for you to be afraid of it. But then, even if you don’t experience it yourself if you are being told by others, that fear will slowly begin to creep in. And as it sets, a lot of the decisions you make will be affected as a result.

This is just how powerful the imagination can be. Fear has always been a great tool, and people who know how to use the fear of others will always be one step higher than those who don’t. It’s not fair, yeah. But that’s life.

_Pixabay

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_{Thank you for reading. Feel free to place a comment below, I would love to know what you are thinking. Till we meet in the next post.}

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