There’s a line from an anime that has stayed with me for a very long time.
Donquixote Doflamingo (an imaginary character from the anime One Piece) once said- “Children who have never seen peace and children who have never seen war grow up believing in completely different kinds of justice.”
At first, I thought it was only about war.
But the more I read it, the more I realise- it was never just about one perspective.
A child who grows up in a house full of love and a child who grows up constantly searching for it will never define love the same way.
One will see it as something natural.
The other will spend years wondering if they’ve finally found it.
Someone who has always had choices dreams differently from someone who has spent their whole life choosing between necessities.
Someone who has always been heard speaks with confidence.
Someone who has always been interrupted learns to stay quiet, even when they have something important to say.
We like to believe that values come from logic.
But more often than not, they come from experience.
The things we lacked become the things we chase.
The things we always had become the things we take for granted.
Maybe that’s why people disagree so fiercely.
Not because one person is right and the other is wrong.
But because they’re standing on different stacks of history.
It’s strange when you think about it.
The world itself is neutral.
It simply exists.
We’re the ones constantly trying to decide what is right, what is fair, what deserves to be called justice. And history has a funny way of letting the winners write those definitions. The people standing at the top often become the ones who decide what the truth was all along.
Maybe that’s why everyone is fighting.
Not just on battlefields.
But in classrooms.
In boardrooms.
At dinner tables.
Inside families.
Even inside themselves.
We’re all trying to protect the version of the world that made us who we are.
And yet, some of the people who have taught me the most about living don’t even exist.
They’re fictional.
A pirate chasing freedom.
A swordsman refusing to give up.
A doctor searching for purpose.
Characters someone imagined years ago, somehow managing to understand real people better than many people do.
Funny, isn’t it?
Sometimes wisdom doesn’t care whether its source is real.
It only cares whether it changes you.
They taught me that strength has very little to do with power.
Some of the strongest people are the ones who continue dreaming after life has given them every reason not to.
They taught me that failure isn’t a finish line.
As long as you’re alive, life keeps handing you another page to write on.
The only story that truly ends is the one you stop telling yourself.
And maybe courage was never about knowing you’ll succeed.
Maybe it’s deciding that the wound is worth the lesson.
That trying is worth the possibility of falling.
Because most things that leave scars don’t end up in graves.
So why spend your entire life being afraid of scratches?
Dream anyway…
Love anyway…
Start anyway!
Because one day, you’ll look back and realise that the biggest thing standing between who you were and who you became wasn’t talent.
It was the decision to keep moving.
Maybe that’s why stories matter so much.
Not because they tell us how the world is.
But because, every once in a while, they remind us- how it can be.
Writer : Manya Arora
Grade : 3rd Year Psychology Undergrad (Year 2026)
Place : Mumbai, India
