On life and time

Ok, so before I begin, I want to share a few thoughts.

I am writing after a long time, may be a few months. I do have a list of topics to write on, but my usual mental roadblock of not starting unless I am very sure that I have something great to write kept coming in the way. Secondly, I am not too happy with WordPress but then I do not know how to address that issues, so I am going to continue here.

Now, coming back to the topic.

So, I have a 18 month old son, our only child so far. I have observed something interesting which probably all parents do. He is instant in his responses to what he likes, dislikes, and what he hates. If he does not like something he cries, instantly. He obviously is irreverent to his surroundings and is very transparent on expressing his feelings. For this topic, I am more interested in the whole aspect of expressing dislike, dissatisfaction and anger.

As a parent, my first instinct is to make him agree with me and his mother. My first instinct is often “why does he behave like this?”. And then I realised something very interesting. What he does is indeed the way humans are in their most natural being, and it is the society that, over their lifetime, teaches them the “norms” of behaving as a responsible human being.

But then when I look at my own life and of those around me, we are so conditioned to not express our likes, dislikes and things we really do not like. Expressing anger is often looked at as a sign of abnormal behaviour. But on the other hand we continue to be in jobs we do not like, work with people we hate, live in relationships which are clearly toxic and in general we continue living a life where we push down our feelings. Only when we are living through life with a smile on our faces do we, and more so the society around us, believe that we are living La Dolce Vita (the good life).

I can already see myself trying to “condition” my son about how to conduct himself in the world. When he starts crying in a bus, I instantly become embarrassed and try to pacify him, sometimes by literally showing down a pacified in his mouth. At the same time, I control my anger at a colleague who has caused more damage to the project than we can sustain and often I end up apologising on his behalf to the client. Yes, while expressing my anger to my colleague might not be (.. see how even now I am not able to come to terms with the very theme of the topic I am writing) the best option, but expressing dissatisfaction may help the cause. And you can see how generation after generation we are conditioning ourself into become docile and no wonder there are only a handful of individuals who actually do in life what they charted out to and the rest usually follow the herd.

As for my son, I hope I can control my instinct to condition him and let him grow up in the most natural way possible. And I wish for him that irrespective how much the society tries to condition him into fitting in, he does what his heart wants and does it without fear.