We have our lives wrapped around the city life, our needs, our family issues and financial pressures. We are all forced in a rat race and the issue here is we never see the end of it. If we do, then it scares us. Every person born in this world has a duty to fulfill as a husband, a father, a son, his profession, a grandson. It may be really exhausting to play all these roles but yet we do it for the sake of keeping ourselves alive and trying to provide the best for our loved ones. We die trying but we don’t stop playing all these characters. Our lives are governed by multiple factors including religion, faith, society, community, politics, government’s mood (unfortunately). So basically what I mean is that we are deprived of a lot of freedoms which were taught to us to be true when we were in school.
Isn’t that scary? Not to be able to take charge of our lives. A boy is forced to grow up as soon as possible as he is flooded with responsibility of his family. A girl is forced to quit most of her dreams to be married off. Why are we fed fairy tales in our childhood when the reality is very different? But that makes our childhood so fascinating right?
As we grow older, we understand a lot of happenings which were ambiguous puzzles in childhood. We understand that apart from black and white there is a huge grey area which cannot be explained but only experienced. We understand how people are like little puppets and how they are manipulated into believing the black and white area created by their peers or other people. Human beings are the only species in the entire Earth who have the capability of putting faith in unseen. Unseen could be religion, or even a company like Peugeot. So yes, we are the most powerful species in the world and we are the most dangerous species as well. We have the power to communicate our thoughts clearly, upskill whenever needed or stay the same, we have been gifted to educate ourselves as well as given the rights to be dumb and ignorant.
During the rat race, we often lose track of our dreams and ambitions, and are forced to “go with the flow”. I have been coming across this phrase unnecessarily more than before. Every one tells me to “go with the flow”. No one wants to disturb the chain of actions that have been initiated from time immemorial. Recently, I saw a Netflix series named “Fame Game” in which a famous actress attends counselling with her son. When the counsellor asks about what does she really want, the actress is lost. She is unable to give any answer. Perhaps that’s what happens when you are so invested in your rat-race that you forget what you wanted in the first place. What kind of race where you running? What is the end prize?
Being the most intelligent beings walking the Earth, why are we not able to contemplate what we really want in our lives? Even if we do, we are redirected to do some other path due to many factors including poverty, family struggles and so on. To put it in a nutshell, most humans do not get to choose their own path of how they wanna lead their lives, what they want to achieve and which kind of bright light would they want to see on the end of their rat-race. One of the main reason why they do it is social pressure.
“When you are a parent, you are supposed to forget about staying late- nights, you need to put double the hard work and not expect anything in return”.
“Your kids are your responsibility and you need to be constantly thinking about their future. Your life is done, now that you have kids to look after.”
It’s not easy to hear such opinions. Dealing with these kinds of comments are a real stress. Isn’t child birth, dealing with kids, financial pressure enough to deal with? Judging every step of ours, getting us more pissed is the speciality of the society that we live in. We already have plentitude of pressure to handle. Why can’t our own community, people we are surrounded understand us? Even after the fact that they went through the same trouble and yet it was okay for them to judge based on our actions?
Social pressure can often be overwhelming and depressing. The purpose of this blog is for the readers to pause their race and think of what’s been happening around them, what their plan was and what is their current situation. As a member of the society, we must not blindly follow what others, even if they are elders, are following. Let’s stop and think of what we really want for ourselves and for our loved ones. Let’s change what we can and adapt what brings out the best in us. We are the most feared beings, so there is a reason why we are in that status. Let’s make full utilisation of that post in the righteous way possible.
A Think Piece for you to think about.
Ciao.
NP
Nazia’s Expedition 