Reflections 1

“What’s the world’s greatest lie?… It’s this: that at a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what’s happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate.”
— Paulo Coelho

I think people who didn’t grow up in a civilized society(as we know it) were lucky. At least any thoughts they had were original, and a reflection of their own personalities, and not a product of their upbringing. Well, to some extent their surroundings would have been an influence, like they would’ve liked raw meat because that was all they could get and stuff like that, but at least it would have been better than what we are like now. Now,the sphere of society in which we are brought up defines the way we think. And there are unspoken rules for the whole of “society” that everyone has to follow or be labelled a radical or rebel, or worse, a criminal.

I find myself reflecting on my own life more often than not these days, and being at the crossroads I find myself in,I find myself in danger of falling into that trap of resigning myself. To that elusive thing called fate that everyone uses to excuse their taking the easiest way out. Yes, it will be easier to be less ambitious. To follow what everyone else is doing. Or at least something that everyone else can accept because it is within the limits of what they consider an reasonable action for my age and stage in society. So I’m 22. What am I supposed to be doing? My degree. So if I decide not to? Every single person I’ve met has reacted exactly the same way to my rejection of an engineering degree. Like I am a loser and a retard who didn’t know a good thing when she had one. So it’s a mistake to follow my dreams and not be a lemming? So should I endure the pitying glances? The violent objections of parents and relatives and people I barely know?

I mean theoretically it’s easy to say that you can take control of your lives at any point in time. I understand that, I really do, but taking control requires a lot of effort and mental strength. Especially when everyone seems to have an opinion on what I should be doing, and things get unpleasant when you don’t sit snugly inside your compartment on their cupboard of life or whatever. Mine would have been titled brainy bookworm aka annoying goody two shoes for most of my life. So most people seem to react with surprise that I might actually not want to be considered a brainy bookworm aka annoying goody two shoes. They seem shocked that I know how to lie. And even more shocked to know that I have a personality that is not all good. That I know how to swear. That I defy my parents.

“Everyone seems to have a clear idea of how other people should lead their lives, but none about his or her own.”

Paulo Coelho has a quote for every situation, doesn’t he? Oh well.. Sometimes, I do wonder, why am I fighting so hard to keep my dream? Oh only because I’ve had it for like what, 17 years? Wouldn’t it have been more surprising if I had just ditched it and gone on to become a engineering android? It would have been easier, and what everyone expected me to do. Not that I have anything against engineering. It’s great if you have a passion for it. But I don’t. Not even a dollop of interest. I can’t even muster up a drop. And you expect me to make a career out of it, and act shocked when I don’t want to?

And of course, in the life plan of an Indian girl, there’s always a road block in the form of marriage that supersedes everything else that’s going on in her life when she reaches her mid twenties. So everything that she wants to do, she has to do by that time. Or else, too bad. It wasn’t in your fate. And horrifyingly, I find myself planning my life around such a timeline too. That is what a civilized upbringing does to you. I’m sure I would have been happily swinging on the trees without any thought to marriage until I died if I had been raised in a forest instead of this urban jungle that calls itself civilized. I wouldn’t even have known what marriage was. And that would have been a good thing. And here we are patting ourselves on the back for evolving and leaving behind our barbaric ancestors and becoming civilized blah blah.. And we left behind our capacity for free thought too. Isn’t that more worrying? We call ourselves sophisticated because we have better toys, but if you compare current society with ancient civilizations they were more free in expressing themselves in many ways. Now,the only thing that people express freely is their disapproval..

After all that ranting about society when I know nothing about the anthropological aspects of how it developed and why it’s supposed to be a good thing, I think to myself, I have to find someway to pay for medical school after getting my Bachelors. If not I will have to do a Masters in something, and then I will never be able to do Medicine. And why not? Can’t people get into Medical School when they’re 26? I bet they can. But my brain finds it hard to wrap itself around the concept that I have the choice to continue studying till I’m 80 if I want to. The traditions and conventions that have been drilled into me since birth have tethered me so tightly to this way of life that I find it extremely hard to think of something so revolutionary in relation to my life even in my thoughts.

Maybe I should tattoo Paulo’s quote to my forehead. Or less drastically, write it somewhere where I can see it all the time- to remind myself when I make decisions that I have the right to make my own decisions. Instead of following the little voices in my head that tell me what to do. No, I don’t have schizophrenia, I’m talking about the thoughts of the people around me that have been imprinted in my consciousness, subtly influencing every decision I make.

Wow.Writing is actually cathartic. Who’d have guessed. Maybe I need to get a journal to become less of a emotional mess. Okay, the little voices in my head are telling me to stop my brain vomit and go to sleep to preserve whatever cells I have left. And so I shall.