I have always been a person who followed
the dictates of my mind. Reason, I believed was more important than passion. One
must do the right thing, even when your heart and dictates of “passion” doesn’t
agree with it. I had a strong sense of “right” and “wrong”. But the global
lockdown has really forced me to rethink this whole conditioning. It has forced
me to question this way of thinking. Of putting what is “right” before what my
heart or even mind tells me to do.
Growing up, I belonged to a
typical conservative Hindu family. With overprotective parents. Yea, the types
who say “log kya kahenge”. Result ? My need to keep the peace and harmony led me
into believing that I must be a good girl. I must obey their dictates for my “highest
good”. I made their wishes and commands the centre point of my life and pleasing
them became my life goal. Not realizing that in the process, I had lost myself.
I had forgotten how to listen to my heart. Infact, I doubted that I even had
one. And this way of living had turned me into a completely different
individual. A robotic person with no emotion, but just one life goal- to keep
peace and harmony by meeting the expectations of my parents and family.
And I do not blame them for this.
Not even for a second. It was just my way of dealing with it that was faulty. This
was something I realized in the lockdown period. I realized that the moment I would
deviate from my so called righteous path, even for one day, my so called family
would turn on me. I realized that there was no unconditional love. I was just
trying to brush things under the carpet, living someone elses life.
But I am really thankful to this
lockdown, that it brought so many things to the forefront. Attitudes, beliefs, whims.
More than anything else, it exposes all the social conditioning that we have
been exposed to for all these years, and have been too arrogant to acknowledge.
I was forced to re-think, whether
the whole path of listening to “reason” was really right ? People who we try to
please, are they really worth it ? Do they really love us? What are we trying
to achieve ? Peace? Why are we so obsessed with this false idea of peace and
harmony. Why do we forget that when we try and keep quiet, and maintain a good demeanor
just to keep the “peace” it messes us up inside. It starts a whole new war,
inside of us. It mentally destroys us. Little by little. And we allow all this
to happen to us just to do what is “right”, which was, by the way the “right”
defined by the same people who do not love us. Who are not worth it?
The harsh reality is this, I was a
coward. I was someone who did not know how to listen to myself. And I had too
big an ego to accept my failure. I failed to keep myself happy, peaceful. I
failed to stand up for myself and justified it by calling it keeping the “peace”.
I wanted to reward myself for my failures by giving my self the peace prize.
Reality is, the so called peace that we are trying to keep does not exist. It is
an illusion that we create in our own head, giving our minds an excuse to be
coward and not to stand up for ourselves.
I failed to understand, and most
people like me forget that real peace is not in brushing aside the daily
conflicts and giving into what other people say is “right”, but in coming to
harmony with our true selves. And by brushing those conflicts, by following the
dictates of others idea of right and wrong, we are going farther and farther
away from our true selves.
