Digging deeper into India, Marriage & The Rot of Unhappiness
Friends, today we gather to peer into the curious case of "Amele Huduga Sigala", otherwise meaning "afterwards you won't get boys to marry". We're going to put on our detective caps and delve into this strange Universe where boys are so scarce that parents simply cannot find a good enough man for their daughter to marry honourably. The statistical improbability is mind-blowing yet it remains a penetrated truth of life. Why no one has authored research and won awards on this phenomenon? Is the male:female ratio that bad?! We'll send a urgent better to the Prime Minister asking him to address this ASAP. It is unprecedented.
Anyway, on with the investigation! Here lies the case.
The Parents: They want their children to "settle down". The deal, at least according to them, is they had their "freedom" to do what they wanted to through school, college and life so far. Party time's over and now it's time for reality to kick in. They need their end of the bargain satisfied which is where all of life is centred around for them: get married and, at some point, have a family. Another way to put it is, "Where are our grandkids?!"
The Problem: That, after all, was their basis of raising children, but then it also defeats the whole purpose. The parents didn't grow up in the freedom they gave their children. Hence, they won't be able to understand what it does to one's perspective of life. They think their children will have the fun they want and return back to the fold but the full freedom experience offers more. It opens them up a world where life is so much more than just submitting to the viscous cycle of family and society.
The Struggle: Sometimes it takes a lot for struggling parents to give children those things in life; all the while, neither understanding or accepting what they were giving, yet giving out of love. The more they love, the more they give, the more they don't understand or relate to it, the less they find meaning in it, the faster it gets put on a timer. The more this cycle continues, the more the timer gets an extended new lease, the more the parents demand something to show for it (i.e. their original dream of the children "settling down") or are likely to simply pull the plug.
The Pressure: The more the pressure, the longer the wait, the bigger the pressure, the more the blackmail. All the struggles they've endured without understanding why, now while mentioning the utmost love they did it with, start flooding back, emotion bring their main tool. But they ignore: A child is not a predictable linear proposition that you shouldn't have to be disappointed with. Having children is heartbreak itself! How did the memo get lost so quick?
The Misdeal: It turn out there's a problem with the deal to begin with. First, it was a one-side signed one. The children were silently ambushed into it when they couldn't have known better and are stuck not being able to make amends when they can. Secondly, and most importantly, freedom isn't a clause (and a rope) you can rein in when you want. True freedom is unstrung and creates unstrung people. It's more like wings unfettered. A ride you can't pre-determine, which you just go along with for the best experience. As long as they keep their child's happiness primary, all is well and happy but dramas never get written this way, do they?
The Misconception: Parents never had the thought occur to them that children are separate individuals, who, as people, deserve the freedom to carve their own lives, as they are born and they live. They, too, were children growing up, but were not given the privilege. They instead submitted to the vicious cycle, having to ignore their own happiness, thus becoming being unconsciously unhappy inside. A consequence of this is that their basic idea of happiness becomes that of unhappiness and they, tragically, never actually get to realise this.
The Deficit: The result was a big hole that they can't recognise, which will never heal: a sign of their incomplete, unexplored identity of self. As they give away for their children, it plays out. What follows is a tug of war between their own unrecognised unhappiness inside and the effort to give their children true happiness, both ideas directly conflicting each other. Eventually, it looms larger and becomes victor in seeking its redemption, thus creating the elephant in the room which why you're even reading this piece. Unhappiness is an unsuspected rot that will spread its tentacles neither living nor letting live.
The Package Deal: Happiness and happiness sound like a killer combination, doesn't it? But wait. How about the lethal one of unhappiness and true happiness? The original family pack. It's happiness suicide for one as the other seizes every chance of redemption when it's far past that. It's your best guess which is which. That's what happens when you put together unhappy childhood and a pressured marriage together with a childhood that has only its best days ahead.
The Sanctum Sanctorium: So, in short, parents grow up unhappy, and never realise it. They have children, you know, because it's all the rage. Intentional, sensible, proactive and healthy parenting and upbringing is all thrown out the window. The science is lost but love is quadruple, happily doled out in measures they don't understand and don't relate to. Why you ask? Overwhelmed with love, they assumed a deal where they can love their children to let them go, go and gone and that they'll reciprocate it by returning to relive the same viscous cycle that they did because that honour, at the very cost of every good and reasonable thing that their children 'went' to experience, will make their incomplete lives come full circle. So they patiently wait, wait and wait for that day that never should come... until it hits sacred ground
The End Game: Just when all the freedom is set to fully bloom, the timer goes off. The parents lose patience trying to understand what their doled out love was even achieving. The children are just moments away from that freedom taking big fruit. Both opposite ends of the spectrum meet and, lo, the Big Clash. Unhappiness seeks its fair share, as does Freedom, albeit the full share of the very same pie. But the masters make the rules, and for the wise men and the fools, and they reckon it's gone a bit too far this time. They need their honour and want it now. They turn into the visible monsters you wonder why actually even went so far with their children. Here's where the game ends, usually, with a lifetime's worth of freedom flushed down the drain to accommodate the pride of a parent. They should have just married them off to a respectable family the moment they were born if this was what they actually wanted and were that ready to do make it happen.
The Curse: The problem, you see, is unhappiness. It only breeds further unhappiness. If only, everyone chose to be happy, first, at all costs. But, then, there's the deflection of honour. We practically live off it and pretend it alone puts food on the table. When you substitute one for the other, you put your own happiness in other people's control and, like them, you return the favour by seizing someone else's yourself. It's a chain that won't break, unless you yourself break it. You have the power to choose to let unhappiness stop breeding, or you can run madly after everyone else's honour causing to breed even more.
Dear Child: Get out, slyly, if you're caught inbetween. Realise that this is your likely fate and be smart. Even the best Indian parents are programmed to set this trap up for you. Don't be clueless, for your own good. Find love early, if you can. It involves falling in love with yourself. Trust me, it's worth it. Deflect with life goals. Go to another country to study or work and stay away from prying eyes. Fund your own Masters and PhDs. Do not get married when you don't want to. If you let yourself breed unhappiness, you'll simply continue the vicious cycle and ruin another life. May as well save two: yours and your children's. There's nothing wrong with marriage and being settled itself. Everything's wrong with it when you and your partner aren't the central reason for it.
Dear Parents: I know it's hard but sit down and have a good think of the very cycle you are perpetuating. To have the individual lose over family and society is a greater loss than to have family and society lose over the individual. At least, you control your own happiness. Even if you missed a lifetime of opportunities, take back all you can, and stop the cycle from perpetuating. Let your children marry for marriage's sake and let the honour you thrive on be something you can be more proud of because it's more worthy than society's wavering idea of it. They just cast all their insecurities on the next sucker, and you're happy to lap it up. Let your child's freedom take fruition and learn how yours could be too, now. And, this time, don't claim it from your child. Don't disregard their very selves because of the stupidity of society.
And don't worry, going by our human sex ratio, amele kuda huduga sigthira (later too, you'll get a boy). Don't snatch their lives away just because marriage saves the day. (Note: It doesn't!)
Case closed. Elementary, dear society!
Anyway, on with the investigation! Here lies the case.
The Parents: They want their children to "settle down". The deal, at least according to them, is they had their "freedom" to do what they wanted to through school, college and life so far. Party time's over and now it's time for reality to kick in. They need their end of the bargain satisfied which is where all of life is centred around for them: get married and, at some point, have a family. Another way to put it is, "Where are our grandkids?!"
The Problem: That, after all, was their basis of raising children, but then it also defeats the whole purpose. The parents didn't grow up in the freedom they gave their children. Hence, they won't be able to understand what it does to one's perspective of life. They think their children will have the fun they want and return back to the fold but the full freedom experience offers more. It opens them up a world where life is so much more than just submitting to the viscous cycle of family and society.
The Struggle: Sometimes it takes a lot for struggling parents to give children those things in life; all the while, neither understanding or accepting what they were giving, yet giving out of love. The more they love, the more they give, the more they don't understand or relate to it, the less they find meaning in it, the faster it gets put on a timer. The more this cycle continues, the more the timer gets an extended new lease, the more the parents demand something to show for it (i.e. their original dream of the children "settling down") or are likely to simply pull the plug.
The Pressure: The more the pressure, the longer the wait, the bigger the pressure, the more the blackmail. All the struggles they've endured without understanding why, now while mentioning the utmost love they did it with, start flooding back, emotion bring their main tool. But they ignore: A child is not a predictable linear proposition that you shouldn't have to be disappointed with. Having children is heartbreak itself! How did the memo get lost so quick?
The Misdeal: It turn out there's a problem with the deal to begin with. First, it was a one-side signed one. The children were silently ambushed into it when they couldn't have known better and are stuck not being able to make amends when they can. Secondly, and most importantly, freedom isn't a clause (and a rope) you can rein in when you want. True freedom is unstrung and creates unstrung people. It's more like wings unfettered. A ride you can't pre-determine, which you just go along with for the best experience. As long as they keep their child's happiness primary, all is well and happy but dramas never get written this way, do they?
The Misconception: Parents never had the thought occur to them that children are separate individuals, who, as people, deserve the freedom to carve their own lives, as they are born and they live. They, too, were children growing up, but were not given the privilege. They instead submitted to the vicious cycle, having to ignore their own happiness, thus becoming being unconsciously unhappy inside. A consequence of this is that their basic idea of happiness becomes that of unhappiness and they, tragically, never actually get to realise this.
The Deficit: The result was a big hole that they can't recognise, which will never heal: a sign of their incomplete, unexplored identity of self. As they give away for their children, it plays out. What follows is a tug of war between their own unrecognised unhappiness inside and the effort to give their children true happiness, both ideas directly conflicting each other. Eventually, it looms larger and becomes victor in seeking its redemption, thus creating the elephant in the room which why you're even reading this piece. Unhappiness is an unsuspected rot that will spread its tentacles neither living nor letting live.
The Package Deal: Happiness and happiness sound like a killer combination, doesn't it? But wait. How about the lethal one of unhappiness and true happiness? The original family pack. It's happiness suicide for one as the other seizes every chance of redemption when it's far past that. It's your best guess which is which. That's what happens when you put together unhappy childhood and a pressured marriage together with a childhood that has only its best days ahead.
The Sanctum Sanctorium: So, in short, parents grow up unhappy, and never realise it. They have children, you know, because it's all the rage. Intentional, sensible, proactive and healthy parenting and upbringing is all thrown out the window. The science is lost but love is quadruple, happily doled out in measures they don't understand and don't relate to. Why you ask? Overwhelmed with love, they assumed a deal where they can love their children to let them go, go and gone and that they'll reciprocate it by returning to relive the same viscous cycle that they did because that honour, at the very cost of every good and reasonable thing that their children 'went' to experience, will make their incomplete lives come full circle. So they patiently wait, wait and wait for that day that never should come... until it hits sacred ground
The End Game: Just when all the freedom is set to fully bloom, the timer goes off. The parents lose patience trying to understand what their doled out love was even achieving. The children are just moments away from that freedom taking big fruit. Both opposite ends of the spectrum meet and, lo, the Big Clash. Unhappiness seeks its fair share, as does Freedom, albeit the full share of the very same pie. But the masters make the rules, and for the wise men and the fools, and they reckon it's gone a bit too far this time. They need their honour and want it now. They turn into the visible monsters you wonder why actually even went so far with their children. Here's where the game ends, usually, with a lifetime's worth of freedom flushed down the drain to accommodate the pride of a parent. They should have just married them off to a respectable family the moment they were born if this was what they actually wanted and were that ready to do make it happen.
The Curse: The problem, you see, is unhappiness. It only breeds further unhappiness. If only, everyone chose to be happy, first, at all costs. But, then, there's the deflection of honour. We practically live off it and pretend it alone puts food on the table. When you substitute one for the other, you put your own happiness in other people's control and, like them, you return the favour by seizing someone else's yourself. It's a chain that won't break, unless you yourself break it. You have the power to choose to let unhappiness stop breeding, or you can run madly after everyone else's honour causing to breed even more.
Dear Child: Get out, slyly, if you're caught inbetween. Realise that this is your likely fate and be smart. Even the best Indian parents are programmed to set this trap up for you. Don't be clueless, for your own good. Find love early, if you can. It involves falling in love with yourself. Trust me, it's worth it. Deflect with life goals. Go to another country to study or work and stay away from prying eyes. Fund your own Masters and PhDs. Do not get married when you don't want to. If you let yourself breed unhappiness, you'll simply continue the vicious cycle and ruin another life. May as well save two: yours and your children's. There's nothing wrong with marriage and being settled itself. Everything's wrong with it when you and your partner aren't the central reason for it.
Dear Parents: I know it's hard but sit down and have a good think of the very cycle you are perpetuating. To have the individual lose over family and society is a greater loss than to have family and society lose over the individual. At least, you control your own happiness. Even if you missed a lifetime of opportunities, take back all you can, and stop the cycle from perpetuating. Let your children marry for marriage's sake and let the honour you thrive on be something you can be more proud of because it's more worthy than society's wavering idea of it. They just cast all their insecurities on the next sucker, and you're happy to lap it up. Let your child's freedom take fruition and learn how yours could be too, now. And, this time, don't claim it from your child. Don't disregard their very selves because of the stupidity of society.
And don't worry, going by our human sex ratio, amele kuda huduga sigthira (later too, you'll get a boy). Don't snatch their lives away just because marriage saves the day. (Note: It doesn't!)
Case closed. Elementary, dear society!
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