I've often wondered why some ideas stay with us long after a conversation ends.
Sometimes a discussion can make us think, but music, films, stories, and literature can reach places within us that ordinary arguments cannot. They do not simply tell us what to think. They allow us to experience something, and in that experience, we often discover truths for ourselves.
Songs like Kun Faya Kun and Rangrez have always felt much deeper than just songs to me.
When I listen to Kun Faya Kun, it feels like a person asking God to free him from ego, confusion, and pain. It feels like a longing to be released from everything that keeps him trapped within himself. The song gives me the sense that Allah, God, or whatever name we choose to give the divine, already exists within us. Yet we often lose our connection with that inner truth because of fear, social pressure, expectations, and the countless distractions of life.
The song feels less like a search for something outside ourselves and more like a return to something that was always there.
Rangrez gives me a similar feeling. It feels like a prayer to be coloured completely by the divine, to have the false layers created by society, expectations, and conditioning washed away. It is not simply a request for change from the outside. It feels like a desire to become fully truthful, authentic, and connected to something pure within oneself.
This makes me think about how people change.
We often assume that change happens when someone is presented with the right facts or the strongest argument. But many of our beliefs are shaped by years of conditioning. They become part of how we see ourselves and the world. Because of this, direct arguments can sometimes make people defensive rather than reflective.
Stories and art often work differently.
Instead of attacking a belief, they invite us into another perspective. They allow us to feel what someone else feels. They help us see parts of ourselves that we might otherwise ignore.
I was reminded of this while thinking about Dead Poets Society. In the film, the students slowly begin to think for themselves instead of blindly accepting the rules and expectations placed upon them. They start questioning what success, freedom, and meaning truly mean.
Neil Perry's story is especially powerful because it shows how a person can discover freedom internally while still feeling trapped by external pressures. He understands something important about himself, yet the structures around him leave little room for that truth to exist.
That tension feels deeply human.
Many people know what feels true within them, yet struggle to live according to it because of family expectations, social norms, fear, or the need for approval.
This is why I continue to feel hopeful about the power of art, stories, music, and literature.
Even in a world shaped by prejudice, conditioning, and division, one honest conversation, one poem, one film, one story, or one song can sometimes make a person see life differently.
Perhaps truth, goodness, and virtue continue to survive not because they are forced upon people, but because they keep finding new ways to speak to the human heart.
And sometimes a song can do that better than an argument ever could.