I’ve been thinking about connections the last few days.
When growing up, we knew everyone and everyone knew us. We always got discounts at the grocery store because he knew us. We always got discounts at the bakery – in fact my dad would walk in, still does, and act like one of the owners sometimes, giving customers what they were asking. The pav bhaji wala till date does not take money from us. The clothes stores, same thing. The principal/ teachers, the doctors, the house help, the taxi drivers, everyone. We knew their stories, their names, often their children’s names and much more.
What do you know today? Do you care? We have a bunch of ‘friends’ on social media, all projecting a great false life to each other and that’s about it. The society has become more and more about money, and less and less about connections. And it isn’t just because people are changing cities and jobs on a yearly basis. It is because we’re terrified of connecting deeply, of baring our souls to another.
A 70 year long Harvard study showed that the secret to happiness is not money or success – not even remotely, but healthy and fulfilling relationships. No wonder our society is becoming more and more depressed by the day.
It doesn’t have to be this way. I’ve taught this for several years now – you attract what you give out. When you’re willing to open up your heart, you attract similar people towards you. Yes, you still have to ‘put up’ with what you will eventually perceive as fake relatives and colleagues, but you will have more loving and open people in your life. The main question for today is, do you really want a life like that? And more importantly, are you willing to invest in such a life?
Some years ago I saw a couple sitting together. They weren’t exactly young, but the way they were interacting with each other, it looked like they hadn’t been married a long time, maybe 3-4 years. There was so much love in the way they looked at each other. Then a friend mentioned they were married for 30 years.
THIRTY YEARS??? I’ve seen a lot of couples that love each other; no matter how deep the love, it always gets ‘old’ – familiarity sets in, there are aspects of the each other they’ve given up on, etc – what I was witnessing was impossible based on what I had seen thus far. So I had to investigate. I asked her what the secret was. “Never shut down to the other” she said. She gave a few examples but I don’t think I really ‘got it’, back then. As I’ve applied it over the years, I understand a little bit more.
It depends on what you’re looking for in a relationship. If security and longevity is your primary goal, scroll away, this is not for you. But if experiencing love more deeply and more powerfully, and connecting with your partner on deeper levels is what you seek, I have never found better advice than this. The prerequisite is that you are with a person who respects your space and heart, of course, and that you are capable of doing the same.
But the truth is, no matter what you do and no matter how hard you try, you ARE going hurt and get hurt. Normally we ‘shut down’ – build our walls and conclude ‘this person will never change’ and toughen up so that we don’t get hurt. But then you cannot feel the love that deeply anymore either. The door that lets in the pain is the same door that lets in the love. So you feel ‘settled’ in the relationship and there is hardly any pain anymore, but you also forget the intense love you experienced once.
So this Valentines Day, let there be pain. If you want to love more deeply, keep your heart open, knowing that there will be pain, for sure, but it is worth it, and you are strong enough to stand back up. Breathe it in, breathe it out, and hold it in the light of your love. And watch the magic come back to life again.
Happy Valentine’s Day my dear ones. May there be Love.
I never thought I’d write an article on love. It is a topic too vast, and in my opinion a realm where the learning never stops. Nobody can ever claim to completely understand or ‘master’ love, as I see it. So I always thought that writing on it would be a pompous, self-deluding exercise. But here I am anyway, in response to a distraught friend who asked me ‘What is Love?’ at the end of a relationship. It is a question I have asked myself too, so I don’t claim to know the answer. But a little clarity has been there, which is what I attempt to share here.
Emotional abuse is so normalized these days, that most abuse is misconstrued as love. What’s worse, when one tries to call it out, one is often accused of rejecting the other’s love. But the differences are stark and clear, if you’re trying to look for them. So this isn’t meant to be a guide on how to love – that takes years of self-work and healing – but a guide for those trying to figure out if a particular relationship is loving or abusive. Check by studying yourself, not the other person, because love is about giving more than receiving.
You Want to Surrender, Not Control
Control and manipulation are signs of the absence of love and heart energy in a relationship. It means that the person is coming from a space of fear and lack – and someone functioning from that space is not in a position to love.
In abuse, the other person is held responsible for one’s feelings. Osho said that when in love, during conflict the person thinks that there must be something wrong with them. The moment one thinks that there is something wrong with the other person, it is a sign that there is no love anymore. And this is my experience too. Love is acceptance of who you are, as you are, while at the same time calling out your delusions or mistakes – but it does not accuse you or put you down.
You Want to Give
In love, you give for no reason other than it makes you happy and the other isn’t expected to be grateful or to acknowledge how much you do. The statement “I did so much for you, and this is what I get in return” is a clear sign of a lack of love. That was business. There was an investment, and now you’re upset because you didn’t get appropriate returns on your investment. You could be in a relationship for years, and you’d never feel like the relationship was a dead investment – even if it ends badly – because you were never investing in the first place. When doing things for the other makes you happy, then there is no baggage attached to that giving.
What Can I Do for You?
It is always during a conflict of interest when the true colors of love come out. In a loving relationship you will find that both the people are trying to ask ‘what are you going through, and how can I make this right?’. In an abusive relationship, both are defending their positions and accusing the other of not doing enough. Or worse, telling the other person how they need to change.
You Seek a Win-Win
You know how all those stories circulate, about women listing out all the mistakes their husbands have made over the last decade, in every fight? Well that’s normalized abuse for you. It is a sign of an abusive relationship where one demands and the other eventually gives up on trying to comply, or keeps trying, failing, and feeling inadequate. Love seeks resolution so that there can be a win-win – where both partners can be comfortable with a solution. When it’s ‘my way or the highway’, take it for granted that that is not love being manifested there.
Another consequence of seeking a win-win is that it makes it easier to be more forgiving of the other’s mistakes, and also makes you kinder when you’re both hurting.
You Don’t Want to Hurt the Other
Anyone reading this statement is likely to go, ‘Oh I never want to hurt another person’ – and if you just thought that, you’re not only wrong, but you also need to work more deeply with your level of self-awareness. There is a tendency to want to hurt the other person when you don’t get what you want from them, and even more if they are hurting you. Sensitive people are usually more aware of this in others and can feel either deeply traumatized or infuriated when they sense this.
Observe yourself carefully. If you feel like hurting the other person when you feel wronged – either by saying something nasty or mean, or by doing something – even hurting yourself – to bring about pain and/ or guilt in the other, you are not only not coming from love but also being highly manipulative and abusive.
An Apology is Easy. And Meaningful
I think apologies need a separate article on their own, I’ve seen so many people completely screw this up. But you’ll find that when there is love, this comes naturally. When you realize that you’ve hurt the other person, you tend to automatically feel sorry to have put the other person through pain or distress, and you promise yourself that you won’t repeat it. And then you don’t.
“Sorry, but…. ” is not an apology. There may sometimes be an explanation to help the other understand why you acted a certain way and clear the ‘why did you do this to me?’ question in their minds. But there’s a big difference between an explanation and an excuse. An explanation says this is what happened, and I’m really sorry I acted this way and it caused you pain, and an excuse says I’m sorry, but this is why I acted this way, I couldn’t have helped but act like this (and often – if you had acted differently, my words/ actions would not have been hurtful).
There are no rules
We have a tendency to attach rules to love. If it’s true love, it’ll last forever, if it is true love, we’ll never fight, or we’ll never sleep without resolving a fight, true love means never giving up no matter how painful it gets, and so on and so forth. You know what, none of these are true. Nothing is. Love is not bound by a bunch of belief systems. If you’re trying to analyse whether someone else has experienced love, you’re wasting your time and need to find something better to do. If it is your own relationships you’re trying to assess by these standards, let go. Do the best you can, and leave the rest to God. The heart opens bit by bit when the time comes, and you will find yourself more loving as time passes, if you are sincerely working on yourself.
And lastly,
Here’s a video I fell in love with. Botton talks about how love is not ‘natural’ and needs to be learned and taught. Being in a relationship is about patiently teaching the other how to help you feel loved. And patiently and sincerely learning how to make the other feel loved. It is one of the most beautiful videos I’ve ever come across on relationships and I hope you enjoy it too.
I’ve always considered myself a feminist. But much of the movement in the name of feminism disturbs me deeply. It’s like today we celebrate when a woman ‘becomes a man’. Not that a woman should be forced to remain at home and care for her children, no. But it is like that just isn’t satisfying enough anymore. There was an interesting discussion in this context on my group recently, and I post it here because I thought it got interesting.
Ashwita women getting into air force.. fighter jets.. and all this concept of feminism…Isn’t current feminism trying to make women more masculine?
Is war masculine?
Yes feminism is pretty much dead. We’ve glorified and rewarded only masculine qualities and demeaned feminine qualities for decades. So it’s awesome for a woman to go out there and make money – we think she’s awesome, but when a man stays home to take care of the kids he’s somehow a lesser human being. The stars, the achievers, the providers have been glorified, the nourishers, the caretakers, the teachers have been trashed. A cricket star is bathed with money, a nursery teacher responsible for the future generation barely makes two ends meet. So you can see what we’ve prioritised as a society. In your own mind, if you were meeting a star and a nursery teacher, who would you be more interested in? That’s the problem.
And then of course the same gets applied within ourselves too, we prioritise our masculine qualities and downplay our feminine qualities. This works for women because they can get both. You see so frequently these days ‘be the man that you need’. Men suffer too here because then either they lose touch with their feminine altogether and become brutes or they move to the other end, becoming ‘the women that they need’. Now a days I see more kind and nourishing men than the women I meet.
War and aggression are masculine acts yes. Manipulation and brain washing are feminine.
(Someone else) I had a similar doubt. Each soul has different purpose. Should tasks be characterized just based on gender? Or one should put effort to look into soul of the partner/family member and support for its upliftment by doing for that soul (be it man being kind and nourishing)?
What makes you think that gender would limit the soul and take it away from its purpose? If the soul had a different purpose, it would have been born as a different gender.
The soul itself is colourless, odourless, limitless, property – less. It is only the mind that imagines a purpose, ideals, values, etc. If the focus of our life is simply to maximise each moment, we are already living out the real purpose of our life – which is for the soul to experience what it is like to be you.
My mom once said in this context. Go to a shop and look at plain cloth. You can use it for anything. But once it is stitched into a pant and shirt, then the pant goes on the lower body and the shirt on the upper body. Neither is superior or inferior.
Today in the name of freedom, pants want to be worn on the chest and shirts on the hips. To anyone looking at this objectively, it is nothing but ridiculous. We’ve turned everything into a chase these days, including experiences. Women want to become men, men want to become women and experience waxing and threading, the monthly cycles, labour pains, etc. Its insane. You’ll run out of your lifetime simply experiencing what it is like to be you, that’s how intense it is, but no, you’d rather abandon that and focus on trying to experience what it is like to be everybody else! (not you, I mean this generally)
(In response to ‘What makes you think that gender would limit the soul and take it away from its purpose?’) Frequently nowadays, people categorize the tasks, no males have to do this task, female have to do this task. So I thought, that does constant nudging can eventually take soul away from its purpose.
Yeah so who categorizes it? Like putting clothes in a washing machine is not a male or female task, it is a role assigned by the mind. Giving birth to a baby, breast-feeding, these are clearly female tasks. Chopping wood, clearly a male task. Opening a tight jar, clearly a male task 😁 the mind is screwed up for sure, that’s why our society is where it is today. If you’re confused, ask yourself this simple question – who would do this if I was alone? If you could do it, then it is your role too. If it wouldn’t have been possible, then it is clearly the role of the other.
If it is part of your life choices to marry and co-exist with another person (or even co-exist in another setting) then it isn’t about gender roles. It is about finding a balance and making things work more beautifully with that person. If we want to remain attached to your ideas of gender, then you need to be alone – and even then you might have to change them – a woman might have to pay the bills and fix the light-bulbs and a man might have to cook for himself and clean for himself. If you want to effectively function as a unit in harmony with another person, then you have to set your mental ideas aside and see how you can blend in and maximize the potential of that equation.
Almost every other day, I come across some article or person urging others to go out there and live life or follow your heart. Common people seem to be stuck in the rat race, miserable and incapable of having a life between paying off loans and raising children.
This reminds me of my mother’s Reiki teacher, who was a school teacher by profession. One year when they had exchange students come from the UK, they decided to do something different. The students were picked up from the airport and dropped off in the middle of the desert to live with locals in a below-poverty village. There were no toilets, they used broken pots for cooking, vessels were cleaned with sand and meals consisted of dry rotis (flat bread) with red chili chutney. Two weeks later when the school came to pick the children up, the children started crying, saying they didn’t want to go home. Never before in their plush, abundant lives had they experienced love, affection and bonding like this.
What did the village have that these rich British kids did not? What did they have that you do not? How could they be happy with so much less than you have?
While breaking free and pursuing one’s dreams just might be the answer for a select few that have lived oppressed lives in the fear of rejection from society, the fundamental problem in that approach is that it assumes that happiness lies outside. In a relationship, in a career, in material pleasures, in a new place. And that belief puts you on a fast track to misery. The more choices you have, the more miserable you are going to be, because you don’t know ‘which choice will make you happy’. If only you knew that the answer was ‘none’.
“Choice has made us not freer but more paralyzed, not happier but more dissatisfied” More details
Barry Schwartz
When not to Settle
While on the one hand people don’t want to ‘settle’ for mediocre lives, on the other they want to ‘take a chance’ on mediocre choices. Our generation was raised by over-involved parents, and most of us have refused to grow up and own up for our lives. If we invest our energies in growing up, we will start to see that each action has a consequence, and that will change the way we approach a fork in the road.
What choice we make isn’t about whether it will make us happy in the future – happiness is a choice we make this instant – but about what the consequences will be, and whether we can live with that. I’ve seen so many people settle for a lousy partner because they’re too afraid to be alone. Or settle for having a baby because of parental or societal pressure. Or move to an unpleasant place because they’re desperate to ‘get away’ from family or something else. These are exactly times when we shouldn’t be ‘settling’.
Don’t settle when life brings you to crossroads. If you are desperate and frustrated, seek healing and understand that getting into a different situation will offer only temporary respite, if at all.
When “Settling” is Important
We’re not just talking about relationships here, of course. But this quote is just so, so relevant. Once you’ve made a choice, stick with the consequences and make peace with where the choice has taken you. When you truly make peace with it, it is possible that looking at those beautiful couple or travel pictures on facebook or elsewhere might leave you a tad uneasy, but never will it empty out your heart of happiness.
So many people want to change their lives so desperately that they just cannot give the present moment their best. This is the same as being so unsure whether you’re on the right track, that you are unable to walk. But unless you move, you’re not going anywhere. If you are meant to have a different life, it will happen, and life will bring opportunities and openings your way. If you’re feeling stuck and frustrated in a completely unfulfilling life, it is time to understand that it is not life that is unfulfilling, but you who have stopped investing. Embrace your life for what it is in this moment and give it everything you’ve got. And that’s how you live.
“If you think it’s fame and money that are the key to happiness, you’re not alone – but, you’re mistaken. As the director of a 75-year-old study on adult development, having unprecedented access to data on true happiness and satisfaction here are three important lessons” More details
We all point fingers. Some of us do it more subtly, that’s all.
The millenials are an interesting generation. We want to share our lives with the public, and we want everyone to love us. We seek approval quite compulsively, because we rarely have any real assurance that we’re doing ok. And this sharing and desire for approval comes with its shares of disasters. When you share your lives with the world, someone is bound to disapprove. And then all the troubles begin.
I’ve been seeing a spate of images like this, making rounds on facebook.
Judgmental remarks about judgmentalism
and it seems almost everyone is feeling this way.
What is ‘being judgmental’?
When someone starts to decide who or what someone else should be, we can say they are being judgmental. People are judgmental all the time – people are either too fat or too skinny, too dark or too pale, their hair is not right, they don’t raise their kids right, they don’t have kids, or don’t get married in time, the list is endless.
Why do they do it?
Yes. Why do WE do it? Have you ever met a non-judgmental person? That person is probably enlightened. And even they might have judgmental thoughts that they’re not paying heed to.
Why do we judge? We judge when our identity is threatened. We judge because in some way, the other has caused us pain. And if we chose to admit that we are all the same and there is no difference, then that would undermine the pain they are causing us.
Look at the images above, for instance. They are completely judgmental statements about judgmental people. By telling another not to judge, we are telling them they cannot be exactly who they are. Which is exactly what we are telling them not to do. And why are we doing it? Because when they judge us, it hurts us, and we feel a tiny bit smaller. One more person who doesn’t think we’re good enough. Who needs that kind of negativity in their lives?
We want people to accept us as we are. And we refuse to accept others as they are until they stop judging us.
We’re all doing the same thing
We all judge. Some are more open and verbal about it, and others are more sophisticated and quiet about it. We judge when we meet someone who challenges our description of what the world should be like. Everyone’s description varies, and that’s what makes things interesting.
We even judge ourselves, and sometimes we go one step further and judge ourselves for judging others.
How do we deal with it?
We start by recognising that judgment is a reaction coming from pain. Why would we ask a person in pain to change themselves? They’re in pain. And if they are projecting their pain onto us through their judgment, we take a metaphorical step back, and witness our pain. Yes, I feel hurt, yes I feel judged, and it is ok for this person to judge me. This is who they are, and I am what I am and we are both ok.
A beautiful woman had once told me, ‘lead by example’, and those words rung so true. Lead by example. Embrace the other along with all their flaws, even the ones that seem to hurt you. And bring just a little more love, and a little more joy into the world.
Straight, useful trees are the first to be cut. Twisted, useless trees get to live long, long lives.
When I was in school, we had a lesson in English, where the author shared the story of a cousin who was utterly useless, but managed to have a better life than others. Being hailed as a good-for-nothing by family members, it turned out that women always wanted this useless man, giving him access to a lifestyle he hadn’t earned. Eventually, he married a rich old woman, who left him an insanely big inheritance. I think including a yacht.
I don’t know why this story stuck with me. Maybe because everything else we heard those days told us that hard work was the key to success and that life was fair, punishing bad people and rewarding good ones. This story told a different tale. Life was unfair. Unpredictable. It was a hard lesson to forget.
Osho Agrees…
The lesson that people could fall for useless people repeated itself in front of my eyes in real life every once in a while, and I’d remember the story every time, silently shaking my head.
And now, as I read ‘Intimacy’ by Osho, I found something that left my head reeling. ‘Be useless’, he says. (Click here to read an excerpt) The more useful you are, the less love you will have and the more you will be used. How on earth could that possibly make sense?
But when I dwell upon it, it starts to make sense. I’ve said many times before, that love and need are mutually exclusive. And a useful person is needed by many. He is so useful that he attracts people that have use for him. He will eventually get manipulated, used, abused. A useless person, on the other hand, can only mingle with people who have no use for him at all. Indeed. the only reason they would want to be with such a person is because they love him.
And then of course, there are the deeper aspects. Those who become useful, expect returns for their efforts, either materially, physically or emotionally. They help because they want to feel important in other people’s lives. And the compulsion to make this person feel important can be very tiring, very stifling for those receiving the favors. Even more reasons for a lack of love. This relationship is a burden, not a gift. Deep inside the subconscious, this person knows that people are with him because he is useful. It leads to a very unsettling feeling of a constant lack of love.
A useless person on the other hand, expects nothing. There is space and openness for the other person to feel whatever they are feeling.
How Useless is Useless?
So does this mean that we must all drop whatever we are doing, quit our jobs, and sit in wait for someone to put morsels in our mouths? No. We do need to drop our desire to be useful to other people so that they can value us in some way. Stop doing anything because others want you to, need you to. Do it because YOU want to.
We might sometimes be useful in love – but those are actions stemming from a deep love, not from an expectation of gratitude or anything more. These actions don’t commoditize us, but they just might add an extra spring in our step.
Ultimately…
So if you merely want to reinforce your ego and your false sense of security by being surrounded by people you can control because you have something to offer, then by all means, be useful. But, if you want to eliminate egoic, need-based relationships from your life, if you really want to be surrounded by people who just love you, be useless.
We live in a community. Sooner or later, someone will hurt us.
Whenever I talk about acceptance and surrender, one question that inevitably comes up is ‘so then how do I deal with this person who is hurting me, do i just stop reacting? Won’t they hurt me more if I stop giving it back? Won’t their egos get bigger?’
It is a relevant question, and one of the hardest life lessons to learn is effectively dealing with those who are hurting us.
It is about you, not them
The first, hardest thing to embrace is that whatever problem it is, it isn’t about that other person. No matter how vindictive, how sick, idiotic or sadistic they have been, it is your own negativity they are reflecting back to you. The whole world is your mirror, and every person reflects back an aspect of you. Some reflect back the nice sides, some the unpleasant. But it is all just you.
Now, one thing to watch out for here, is the tendency to be harsh on yourself. When this realization strikes deeply, one tends to take all the hatred they’ve been directing towards others and turn it inwards. This isn’t going to help. Skip it.
Don’t give your power away
Whenever you insist that someone else needs to change for you to be happy, you are giving your power away. Essentially, you are saying that you refuse to be happy until this person you hate, changes. Does that look like a sensible quest to you?
Let go of Right vs Wrong
It is when we are stuck with ‘I am right and this person is wrong. Look at how ridiculous his/ her actions are’ when it is the hardest to heal. If you are going around seeking confirmation from people that this person IS horrible, you will lose out on the opportunity to transcend the mess and be happy.
It doesn’t matter how many people agree that the person who is bothering you is being ridiculous and needs to change. If you give your power away, then they are in charge and you are hostage.
So, then what next?
No matter what the situation, a problem arises only when we are unable to handle the way this person is making us feel. Once we understand this, we can focus on resolving our emotions, instead of asking the other person to change.
Does that mean I shouldn’t react?
When we react to situations, we are letting our emotions control us. When we respond to a situation, we are letting our wisdom guide us, and doing whatever makes sense. Both the reaction and response might be the same action sometimes.
If someone is hitting you, for example, it may be sensible to fight back, kick and slap. If you do this as a reaction, then your mind will cloud up, prevent you from thinking clearly, and also create emotional trauma for both of you. If you respond, you will be more stable and calm.
Resolving emotions and learning to respond
You will only start to heal the situation, when you take complete ownership for the mess. This is rarely easy, because it is much more convenient for the ego to put the blame on the other person.
Sit with your feelings. If you wish to resolve the issues, spend some time everyday, sitting with how this person makes you feel. Close your eyes, and visualize the person/ situation and allow yourself feel whatever comes up. Avoid blaming or trying to come up with an explanation. Just feel.
Then do it with them. Once you have some practice with surrendering to your pain, you can do it when you are with the person too. Remind yourself that this is not them but their pain acting through them. And allow yourself to feel everything you feel in that moment.
Bear in mind. Surrendering to your feelings does not mean that you scream and shout as you please. Screaming and shouting are reactions that come up when you are trying to avoid your feelings. When you focus on feeling, you may not say much and if you do, it will be effective.
An average person checks email 30 times an hour when at work.
For a spiritual aspirant in the modern age, I think one of the biggest traps is the social media. There are two aspects to this. The attention span, and the desire to listen/ speak.
The Dangerously Low Attention Span
Many zen masters insist on developing deep, intense concentration before they impart any serious knowledge. This is because a flickering mind can accomplish very little.
We, on the other hand, have spent years programming our minds to process as little as possible. The advent of television had already reduced our attention spans to just 12 seconds – Notice how not a single shot on tv will last more than 6-8 seconds. If nothing else, they switch the angle. This makes sure your mind is engaged only for those many seconds. Today, the average attention span of internet surfers is 8 seconds. One second less than that of a goldfish.
We Speak. We don’t Listen
We are now a society where everyone wants to be heard, and no one wants to listen. Earlier, when we sat down for a chat we had to listen. At the most we’d have a cup of coffee in our hands, but apart from that, there was just us and the person we were talking to, no distractions. Have you stopped to observe what our communication today is like?
We’re on a phone call and we’re texting at the same time. Even worse, while driving. We’re skyping, but we’re surfing the web as we talk. Observe really carefully the next time this happens and you’ll realise – you’re not paying any attention at all.
Face it. We don’t actually care. We have no interest in really listening to the stories our loved ones are telling us. We are interested in listening to the extent of reinforcing our identities. For example, if you support a ban on animal slaughter, then you’ll pay a tad more attention to a page or a person supporting your views, than you would to something against it.
How this is Hurting Us
When nobody is listening, conversations become redundant. You talk about something, then talk about it again, and then repeat the same story yet again, and it is still not satisfying. So then we go blog about it, post it on facebook, twitter, instagram and what not, and we’re still not satisfied. Because no one is listening.
Add this fact to the shortening attention span, and it makes things even more difficult. You cannot listen, even if you are interested, even if this is your child talking about a tough day at school or something more painful.
It’s not Hard to Change
Mediation cannot be just an item on your schedule. It has to be a way of life, something you practice every moment.
Stop glorifying multi-tasking. There is nothing cool about multi-tasking. The brain cannot multi-task, and there are gaps between switching tasks, where it is doing nothing at all. This means that the more you switch between tasks, the less efficiently you will be using your brain.
Do one thing at a time, until you are finished. When you are reading an article, for instance, if you have a sudden urge to check your email, watch that desire and drop it. When you are having a conversation, do nothing else, respect the person who’s trying to talk to you.
There’s a video doing rounds recently (My Choice), where Deepika Padukone proudly declares that she can do what she likes, it is her choice, thank you very much. And that includes having sex outside marriage. I was a bit surprised when I saw the video, but what disturbed me even more was when women I thought of as strong, started happily sharing it on Facebook.
We all want to be men
We’ve lost it, I think, in this whole war between men and women. It is like saying ‘you’ve been an idiot all along, and now you cannot stop me from being an idiot too’. Awesome.
In this drive for feminism, it is uncool to be a woman. Everyone wants to be a man. A woman wants to wear the pants, literally and figuratively. Well, great, but then who’s going to be wearing the skirts? So many women today are not ‘women’ anymore. Women eventually become mothers, who are symbols of nourishment and unending love. Do the women today nourish? They’re too busy neglecting their families and leaving their kids in the care of parents and maidservants in pursuit of their careers. They’re too busy trying to have it all – work, travel, looks, marriage AND kids. Usually, it is the kids who get the raw end of the deal. But hey! In a multi-income family, at least they have enough toys.
What else did we expect?
This is understandable though. Through several generations now, women have been on the receiving end and suffered immensely. Now they’re tired of having to put up with all the suppression, and are hitting back. Men can’t handle that someone they took for granted for centuries is now not the same anymore. Everyone is just acting out their pain, and inflicting pain on everyone else with the excuse that they’ve had it for so long.
Don’t turn the tables
To turn and bite back is NOT the solution. As a therapist, I have more male clients being tortured by their wives, than female clients being tortured by their husbands. It is unfair to draw conclusions only from my clientele, but at least, we know that such things exist.
So many women today want to marry a rich guy, stop working, and go parlor-hopping. They don’t want to cook or clean or care for the man in any other way. And when the man wants to leave because he finds that she wants a husband but has no interest in being a wife, she throws a couple of court cases in his face, drags his whole family to court, and demands alimony. I have even seen a woman beat her husband up in a court house. What about these men? Don’t they have any rights? Don’t they deserve justice and happiness?
Pain is Pain
It doesn’t matter who is in pain. If men are pained, they will pass it on to women. If women are in pain, they will pass it on to men. How do we stop the cycle? By looking inwards and healing ourselves. Pointing fingers won’t get us anywhere.
So yes, go ahead and do things that you want to do – whether you are a man or a woman. It is your choice. But are your choices driven by love or fear? Do you want to wear short skirts because you really want to, or is it to rebel? Do you tell your wife not to wear short skirts out of love or because you want her to do your bidding? Acting out of love will create situations where love can grow. Acting in fear or with a desire to control will only create a bigger mess.
We can’t exist without the other
We want freedom. But what about the freedom of a woman to stay at home and care for her children – is that really possible without a man? What about a man who wants to be able to dedicate his life to a career – can he really succeed without a woman to look after his needs? Or even vice versa.
We can’t get anywhere without love. Yes you want your freedom, but you can only be so free if all you care about is yourself. If you really want freedom, you’re going to have to sacrifice, irrespective of whether you are a man or a woman. Sometimes, that means letting your child have the last slice of pie. Sometimes it means sacrificing a career. Or a promotion. Or other desires. But when the sacrifice comes because YOU want to do it, and not because you are afraid of your spouse or the society, then you know that you have come of age.
Men and women aren’t that different. We are human beings first. And it will serve us well to remember that.
