Recently I happen to see a video in facebook
THE VIDEOThe above video highlights the lack of freedom that young Indian men experience and emphasizing that even men are equally curbed like women. If we happen to understand the video, we would also find the reason for this situation. Yes, it is the ‘Samaaj’ (Society). We have heard the hue and cries of many parents, ‘log kya kahenge’ (What will people tell?), ‘mein kaise logon ko mooh dikhaun’ (How will I show my face?)
Why is it so that these questions form the base of the arguments for the parents when their interests and their children’s interest do not match? What makes the parents take up this attitude while involving in decision making (of matters related to education, career, marriage, etc) with their children? The answer that I can come up with is – people (parents in this case) do not know how much importance has to be given for public perception. The fear/worry of public perception has breached into our lives. As the fear grows, it nourishes our Public life more and more by taking away from our Individual life. Fair enough, we must have a public life as we are social animals. We need the society as it plays a role in our survival and betterment of life in terms of providing us food, facilities, suggestions, help, information, human interaction. But to what extent they must interfere in our lives? At what cost should we lean towards our public life instead of our Individual life?
Tiny drops make an ocean, and not vice versa.
We must understand that we as individuals make up the society. It is true that when elements get together they tend to influence upon each other to form a compound which has different characteristics than that of its constituents. But it doesn’t mean the elements tend to change their nature after becoming a part of the compound. A Hydrogen atom still remains Hydrogen in a compound of water. If this is nature, we must also similarly maintain our core (Individual life) even though we are a part of a society. The following can be taken as a comparison.
In a compound formation, elements exchange electrons, similarly while joining a group we exchange few characteristics.
Electron --> Public Life --> The thing that bonds us with other people, and makes the society
Nucleus --> Individual Life --> Our own wishes, dreams, individuality that this is unique to each one of us.
But we are becoming an exception to the above phenomenon. We have started to exchange/share/change our nucleus with the compound and trying to change ourselves to other elements. Things like Peer pressure, honor killings, showoffs, forcing kids to do things; comparing people are all the outcomes of the exception. This fear is in the form of social status with our elders, and peer pressure among the current generation. If its child’s education, marriage, career path among the elders; it is relationships, possession of things, mannerism, tastes that gets affected among the youth.
What I feel is while running after things to satisfy our public life (satisfying teachers, parents, spouses, bosses, friends, trying to get accepted in peer groups,etc) one forgets his own self. And this is the reason why people after years, look back and say ‘Is this what I wanted??!!!’
What can be done to avoid this question? One must time and again connect with our Individual self, passion, wishes. We must also decide who is important to us. And even after we choose, we should decide what they say whether it is important to us or not.
As said by my friend, ‘once we start ignoring unwarranted advices they will stop coming; only when we honor them or react to them they are inflicted upon us’. So we must know when to stop the influences coming from our public life. If we can’t we will start taking into consideration others perception for trivial things in our life and eventually end up doing nothing, living a boring life.
I can sum it up by quoting lyrics from a Rajnikanth starrer movie Baba. In a song, the lines go like this
‘pattum padamale, thottum thodamale, thaamarai ilai thanner pol nee, otti ottamal iru’
Translation: like a water on lotus leaves stay in touch but do not mix up...
