The husband, a palmist by pure interest took a look at his wife’s firm thumb and declared: you are stubborn. Comparing it with his own supple thumb, he categorized himself as being eminently flexible and thus took the credit for even the success of the marriage.
He went a step further… It is because you are so stubborn that you have so few friends… Look at me. And your daughter. We have so many friends, simply because we are not as stubborn as you. The one friend you have must be having a thumb which indicates that she is very flexible that is why……
The presence of the daughter prevented her from telling him to go take a hike.
It was not that that the prediction was the dictum of the Gods, though at that particular moment it hurt. It hurt to know that he would make such declarations without giving a thought to the making of the person.
Twenty years of togetherness may have instilled some ability to sense that all is suddenly not well. He tried to mend the damage, maybe sensing the undercurrents of the hurt, as she continued reading her book. Sensing her withdrawal, he commented again, addressing his daughter: maybe that is why she is so persevering, has such a strong will power compared to you and me. (I think he initially meant being strong-willed, when he said ‘stubborn’)
She could see no connection between being stubborn and having a strong will, though she was too tired to analyse, explain or even defend her personality traits! The child went to sleep. So did she. But somewhere the hurt filtered into her dreams, and she had a fitful night’s of rest.
Come next morning, and glancing through the paper, she happened to look at a column which spoke of enduring friendships. Relationships built during college days, during one’s career, and then finally about broken relationships which are not worth the sorrow it brings, because they do not justify the beauty of the relationship.
It set her thinking again. Were relationships lost in her life because she had been stubborn? She could not think of a single person whom she had dropped on the way, simply because of her inflexible thumb! On the other hand, the few people she had in her life, were there to catch her whenever she fell. How many people do you need to support you when you stumble? If the pair of hands is strong enough, just one will do.
I think we have very different measures to judge people’s emotional successes.
If you are able to spend the whole day simply clicking away at a mobile phone with that flexible thumb, sending messages to your countless ‘friends’, you take credit for the success of the relationship. Because the longer the list of people you have in your life, the better you are as a person! Thus spake one wise man, for whom there was apparently success in numbers!
Yes, this lady has very few people in her life… because she did not believe in excess baggage. She does not believe in superficial relationships. People feel threatened when they interact with her: threatened by her firm thinking, her clear thoughts and expression, and her persona of assertiveness (which people, for lack of a command of the language, and ignorant of the nuances term it aggressiveness).
But they also reach out to her when there is a crisis, when things were to be just done, no matter what the consequences, when they were like a lost herd of sheep… And just because she was the kind, who pitched in and just went about getting things done, she never attached any value to such actions of hers…. It was not done because she wanted accolades, or appreciation. As a part of society, as a weave in a large pattern of life, she did her share. This no-nonsense attitude of hers unnerved some people- simply because she had no time for soft-pedalling. Was it stubbornness I wonder, or just a strong-will?
This very lady stood like a rock beside her husband when he underwent terrible personal and professional tragedy…. drawing on this very quality of ‘stubbornness’ in her, which I choose to call a strength of the mind and an indomitable spirit. A strength which refused, and still refuses to buckle under pressure. She has sifted the chaff from the grain in her life, and she is happy with the ‘few meaningful relationships she has’ rather than collecting a crowd like a politician who has lorryloads of paid people coming to listen to his speech. She has company in other forms: in the form of books, music, the flora and the fauna, in her very own private thoughts and in forms which people who are flexible may never understand!!!
Saturday, April 18, 2009
The right to live: Life: a fundamental right.
As a counselor, I get to handle a lot of clients who come with a problem which can be primarily traced to upbringing: dependency. A quality which, unfortunately, the parents are responsible for inculcating in children, when they insist on tying the shoelaces of a child who is quite capable of doing so on his own, when they insist on feeding the child when the child wants to eat on his own, explore, either because they do not want to clear up the mess later, or simply because they feel the child is not ‘old enough’. Such children grow up expecting the world to wait on them, and are unable to be effective problem solvers or decision makers. The parents continue to decide for them, the child keeps riding on their shoulders, thus perpetuating a dysfunctional family when he grows up and has a family of his own.
The parents fail to realize that every child is an individual in his own right. Right from the moment he chooses to be born. Yes, it is now widely accepted that a child chooses his womb, and his choice is based on a variety of lessons and experience that he needs to learn in this lifetime. When a child that is not even born into this world, who, when he is just a soul incapable of even bodily functions, is able to choose, what right do we have, as mere mortals, to decide or override this choice? What is the basis by which we decide whether the child lives or not? The child, like I said earlier, even chooses his parents. And we, self-righteously, decide to reject this; and the child. I remember seeing a film sometime back, when a child overhears his father, who is a police commissioner, declaring to the kidnappers of the child, that he would refuse to buckle to their ransom condition (release of a terrorist, I think I am not very sure). The child manages to escape from the kidnappers and comes back home, but grows to be thoroughly dysfunctional, carrying a chip on his shoulders against his father, who has proved that he chose to reject the child over his principles, and who is perplexed to see why his son has shut him out. He spends his entire career chasing his son who has become an anti-social element, not realizing the role he played in making him so.
What is the thread running here? The right to choose. The right that we deny to our children. The right that is being denied to a young foetus, just six months old. Simply because we decide the foetus does not have the right to choice. The right to decide. And the right to live. I dread to think what the child would go through, if he chooses to live, either with a disability or with all his abilities intact, when he comes to know that his parents rejected him even before he was born. Is he going to become a child with a conduct disorder, or carry with him a feeling of rebuff throughout his life? Will his parents be able to make up for this initial rejection? Just because one of his organs is malfunctioning? Do the parents realize that when they appeal to the law to allow them to abort the unborn child, they are tampering with a higher law? A law that sees no appeal, no petitions in higher courts? We pat ourselves on our back when a test tube baby survives for three decades and do retrospective living. Won’t the child do the same? What will he live through then? The society going down on bended knees before him will not erase the hurt in his mind then, unless he turns out to be elevated souls, and then we will have enough more to contend with!
Can we include an eighth fundamental right in the constitution? A Right to Life…
Mohana Narayanan
August 5, 2008
The parents fail to realize that every child is an individual in his own right. Right from the moment he chooses to be born. Yes, it is now widely accepted that a child chooses his womb, and his choice is based on a variety of lessons and experience that he needs to learn in this lifetime. When a child that is not even born into this world, who, when he is just a soul incapable of even bodily functions, is able to choose, what right do we have, as mere mortals, to decide or override this choice? What is the basis by which we decide whether the child lives or not? The child, like I said earlier, even chooses his parents. And we, self-righteously, decide to reject this; and the child. I remember seeing a film sometime back, when a child overhears his father, who is a police commissioner, declaring to the kidnappers of the child, that he would refuse to buckle to their ransom condition (release of a terrorist, I think I am not very sure). The child manages to escape from the kidnappers and comes back home, but grows to be thoroughly dysfunctional, carrying a chip on his shoulders against his father, who has proved that he chose to reject the child over his principles, and who is perplexed to see why his son has shut him out. He spends his entire career chasing his son who has become an anti-social element, not realizing the role he played in making him so.
What is the thread running here? The right to choose. The right that we deny to our children. The right that is being denied to a young foetus, just six months old. Simply because we decide the foetus does not have the right to choice. The right to decide. And the right to live. I dread to think what the child would go through, if he chooses to live, either with a disability or with all his abilities intact, when he comes to know that his parents rejected him even before he was born. Is he going to become a child with a conduct disorder, or carry with him a feeling of rebuff throughout his life? Will his parents be able to make up for this initial rejection? Just because one of his organs is malfunctioning? Do the parents realize that when they appeal to the law to allow them to abort the unborn child, they are tampering with a higher law? A law that sees no appeal, no petitions in higher courts? We pat ourselves on our back when a test tube baby survives for three decades and do retrospective living. Won’t the child do the same? What will he live through then? The society going down on bended knees before him will not erase the hurt in his mind then, unless he turns out to be elevated souls, and then we will have enough more to contend with!
Can we include an eighth fundamental right in the constitution? A Right to Life…
Mohana Narayanan
August 5, 2008
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