The Pygmalion Child

There is no scope of expressing yourself with him. He wants everything to run like clockwork upon his wishes. 

I know that you do not have a way to talk about your displeasure. Instead of understanding the reason behind what made you upset, and like a healthy parent discussing a solution, his fragile ego takes any contention to be his failure - you must know that already, my five-year-old.

He wants you to smile at his stunts because it is a trophy for him, one that validates him. His life is a true social-media con – glittering smiles, twinning and winning, sparkling festivals, bunch of friends wooing Johnny Bravo. And you must fall in line, finding comfort in every Christmas tree he brings home, every Lego he imports from somewhere to be able to show the world that he is giving you the best. The best of dresses, ribbon on your tresses, colour for your books, piano lessons, ballet shoes or football. He will give you everything that you want, but never the attention that you seek. Between what you seek and what you get, he will always leave some gap. And you will learn rather quickly that you must chase after that mirage that will never be.

You will also have a few more lessons – you will be taught that expressing your displeasure is a punishable offence. Punishment includes withholding of affection and availability, the silent treatment if you will, the long face and hollow look. 

You better listen to him – your mum will teach you how! She knows the rules. The boardgame was supposed to be theirs together. But she is all but a pawn now. He throws a six, she moves six places. He throws two, she takes two steps. He overturns the board – she waits on the floor to be picked up when he starts a new game. The game is completely his!

So, she knows the rules. She has been played long enough – she is used to it clearly that playing by his rules comes naturally to her. You must worship the hands that roll the dice. Else, she will tell you off for being too demanding. Your grandma will put on your five-year-old shoulders the responsibility of holding together their marriage. “Hush child! You must not speak a word about it outside” – they will tell you. “Get cute with your father, swish your dress like a doll; that’s how their marriage will be saved, else…. (it’s all your fault!)”

Your father will make mistakes – and yet you must count on him and treat him like an alpha. We know that he is afraid of being called out. He has a fragile ego. He is a broken child inside. Perhaps he was told off for being “a weak sissy”. And that was when he decided that strength meant not expressing yourself loud.

And you will get treated the same way, child. This abuse will feel familiar, it will be normalized by the archaic societal templates. And then one day when you grow up, you may learn to revolt, to hold your ground. But do not worry since you will have a crush – insanely, stupidly - on a knight who will come galloping to your doorstep brandishing his sweet new narcissism. And it will feel so familiar – this alpha thing, the love-drama, the gallantry! 

Not before long will you notice that you will have fallen in love with your father’s shadow all over again!

The Paperweight

And one fine morning, you will wake up and you will not disbelieve in anything anymore. You will look at your life playing out in divine order. You will feel every emotion, every energy, and smile. Even if there is that residual sadness, it will sit quietly inside you and not gnaw at your heart anymore. You will be able to look at its beautiful crystalline form twirling under your joyful fingers – like a beautiful crystalline paperweight on your desk that once held down sheets of paper, but now you use like a spinning top during an engaging conversation – as if it were a happy, weightless object under its master’s divine hand.

You will know that the grief is only an item in a bright sunny study. It has shrunk from being the mammoth brittle rock occupying the entire room. It once was. But it.

It has metamorphosed. It now shines like diamond, reflecting the sunlight despite itself.

That’s how light sadness will feel today. And every day, from today onwards.

I promise you will reach that day if you are willing to stay committed to finding the purpose of your life. 

Answer, must you?

Facebook asks me "what's on your mind?" It's one question I must never answer. 

What's on my mind should stay there unless it is to spread constructive rejuvenation to mankind. Countries, societies, families are at war with each other, all based on this one suspicion-minting rhetoric "What's on your mind?"

It is a question that does not solicit real answers. The answer to it is, in fact, unknown. Therefore, it is a dangerous question. A question, which if unanswered, will make one man suppose the intention of another; if answered will be lost in translation; if debated, will make us fight one another based on our own conviction. It will start the social media bids for likes, personal attacks, loud arguments. An answer that will make us stick labels on people based on what we make out of their nationality, caste, region, community, religion, gender or anything else that can widen the rift between societies - leftist, rightist, democrat, republican, separatist, nationalist, feminist, sexist, racist, even sadist for God's sake! All are our perception. And if we answer, it will create a non-constructive storm nevertheless.

Yet we love to answer. Answer an unasked question. And let it be known. Because we must subscribe to a narrative. A narrative that we never built in the first place. We only cherry-picked from history written by someone else, a history that chronicles a few events and a few perspectives, but pretends to be complete. We glorify Hitler or Gandhi, whoever feels comfortable, in hindsight though. We have but limited access to either's lifetimes. Limited access, because we didn't live it, did we? We heard through generational Chinese whispers what may have happened back then. And it must have been true, as betold, we assume. What if by subscribing to others narratives we are endorsing Gandhis and Hitlers of today?  Whose Christ, Mohammad or Krishna were they anyway? Who handed them down to us?

We never stop to think of it that way. We never cut some slack to our misgivings for any narrative by asking ourselves one important question "is it possible to know the complete truth? Do we know completely what was on their minds?" That introspection of our own conviction is uncomfortable. We have access to information. We are smart. Smarter is the technology that finishes our sentences for us. As if humans were not doing that already. Combining information used to be knowledge. Now it is an entire narrative, forcefully complete on its own. But what of that information which was left out, which we didn't seek to receive, which we didn't care to listen to, which we trampled over because it did not feed into our narrative?

Your fact is factual. His fact is factual. Her fact is factual too. But we each believe in our facts so hard that we forget that we are still bereft of some of their facts, whom we refused to listen to. And therefore, the truth as we know it, cannot be absolute. So my truth is as incomplete as yours. It is only a set of facts,  surrounded by some perspectives, cemented by my beliefs and assumptions, waiting to be sequenced by my ego.

So much of war could have been saved if only we stopped asking that question - "What's on your mind?" And, instead checked in with ourselves and sought, "Whose Karma am I subscribing to?" Or we disruptively, rebelliously woke up one morning with "What am I going to build today?"