Tuesday, November 28, 2006

Choices

Suppose you were given a choice to tread two paths. One, a life of controlled happiness where everything your parents want you to do has to accomplished by you failing which you're quick to be disowned. And the other where happiness is measured by events that occur in your life periodically but most uncertainly. Such happiness is of utmost importance to you. Which would you choose? Have we really been given a choice to decide what we want to do when we reach a certain age in our lives or has everything been predetermined?

By predetermined, I mean our parents deciding things for us to benefit their happiness. Of course, as parents they would reduce you to a nanoscale and have supreme rights over you. Not forgetting that they would jump at every opportunity to stop you from growing up and always endearingly address you as their loved ones. They blatantly will lie that they love you and care for you and want the best for you. But sure they do. No, I mean really they do. But most often they're concerned of what someone else would have to comment about you as it will affect their honor. We know parents these days are not like that except that we say that to merely convince ourselves. Parents try too hard to adapt to modernization. Everything they see that which is not within their control and advancement to them is being modern. So to curb such extra-terrestrial activities from affecting us, they mould us from ground up to ensure that we grow up according to their world. How they perceive the world to be and how everything that is evil in their eyes is automatically accepted as evil elsewhere. This is all in their benefit as I've mentioned earlier but they will deceive you with their love and say it is for your own good. Not having a choice in what you want to do is somehow good for you in their eyes. Catch is, if you realize their evil, okay noble intentions, the path that you're going to travel is going to be a bumpy one. Be prepared to be admonished for everything that doesn't concern you. Slight variations in your examination results affect their blood pressure. Cool friends are always the parent's enemy. The homely, I-will-not-masturbate kind of friends is what they would want you to have. Even your friends have to be screened before you're given full administrative rights. If all goes well and you score well with the girl in glass, exams I mean, they will love you and brag to others about how their child is God's blessing to them. One little fuck up and out comes the belt or sometimes the ever popular rattan stick. Kinky as it may seem, it's not something that you'd want to end up getting whipped with. Nothing creamy there. To add to that, if you start to fuck up, they will curse you first, and then say that you've been cursed. What's up with that anyway? They would be the embarrassment in the family and their high or low flying society. They will have nothing to say when the extravagant ones meet up for high tea. They will become ultimately humiliated. All thanks to you. Unless they somehow, by grace, realize that you're after all something called a human and can't do superhuman feats all the time. But before such realizations hit them, it is their ego that speaks to them first. In colour mind you. When everything goes down the drain, they finally disown you. Okay maybe I'm being a little extreme here but it has happened before. Not to me but many I know. And no this is not a solemn tribute to them. One should feel sympathy for a child with parents like that. It's like having all the 'luxuries' in the world and yet everything is precisely calculated. After a certain age, sleep time shouldn't exist but in certain families, practices are regimental than we can believe. No wonder the boys from these families seem to have a love for the army in more ways than one. When the time comes and you finally make it and marry someone that looks like a half baked fuck face to them, they scorn with you words your mum has never heard before. First they blame you and then they blame your spouse for the misery that you have put them through. What the fuck did we do to deserve such treatment? Nothing. Just being born in such a household. Fun at times when times are good. It is no surprise that children from such families turn to the dark side. Can't blame them. They seek solace in 'new discoveries' that they have been sheltered from for so long. That is why everything would seem so new to them. To them, this is what they've been longing for. The freedom to do what they wish. Once they have 'matured' in such a fashion, they do things to spite their parents, knowing well the effect it will have on them. Pressure rises, casualties occur and the jailbird sings. The perfect ending couldn't have been well put. But that all could be avoided. Writing on such a grand canyon of a topic will leave me here for a lifetime but I have to move on to other scenario.

So your parents are most of the modern type, well according to their definition of course. So they care about your well being and do whatever is in their power to help you attain that goal of yours even if it's against their wishes. They tend to see that what you want in life is important to you. Blessed you must be if such parents bore you. But is such freedom really beneficial to you? How much do you know about what is out there for you to make a well informed decision? This is regardless of which age group you fall in. You may seek parental advice but they will refrain from giving you advice knowing well that you don't do too well with them. They often wait for you to fall and then give you their piece of mind. Accepting what they have to say all depends on the specific scenario that you're facing. You do realize that their experience will help you but your ambitious or rather pompous nature will stop you from learning. You are determined to learn things the hard way and they don't go according to plan; you crumble and stumble upon every imaginable dead end. Still the good times exist as and when you make them to be. Misery may strike you at any time because you haven't reached the capability to overcome them. And when it does happen, you try not to appear weak in front of your parents. But if they're the intelligent sort, they'd realize but still they would leave you be. The vast difference in the concept between the modern you and your old parents may sometimes overwhelm you. Differences in opinions may result in conflicts and you worry more about yourself because you're aware that they're not going to be around for long and what they expect from you doesn't matter. You know that by doing things to momentarily appease them in their golden years isn't going to help you in the long run. Sometimes your comprehending parents wish you were the child they dreamt of but you have other matters to think of. It may seem pretty unfair that you may chuck them aside and be more concerned about your own goals. Educated beyond your ability, salary beyond your expectation and a spouse everyone would die to get hooked up with. Your life may seem fruitful to you and if it's appealing to you, your parents are prepared to understand. But what happens when you start to fuck up knowing well you have all the freedom that they have given you? What if you flirt with the dark side often and end up causing shame to them? Some situations can be avoided. Specific ones, which I need not mention cannot escape. If shit happens, you're answerable for it. As long you don't fuck up anything that causes them grief in this time, it should be okay, right?

The interesting thing about this topic is that the experience with the former is pretty fixed because the parents have been accustomed to their lifestyle and refuse to grow out of it. They have been told to live their lives in such a manner. They were also told to raise their children in order. The difference between this and the latter is that flexibility is there. If the parents understand where you're coming from and you don't do something that drastic, they would rejoice that they had a child like you. Else, they'd disown you like those damn motherfuckers out there. Choosing the second option may seem like the better choice in every imaginable scenario but it is the people who matter in the end as they make or break the choice. It is the feeble human mind that needs to adapt to the surrounding and not vice versa. It is the feeble human mind that has to learn that whatever choice that is made, it is beneficial to both parties. Don't forget to be selfish of course but let others gain as well. Stop the autocracy. This may lead to a better but never a perfect life for both parents and the child. However do not expect things to be colorful all the time. For what is life if it is mundane and routine?

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