Life cannot be stopped

We all were sit­ting on chairs, try­ing to make a cir­cle, leav­ing some space in between. To my dis­com­fort, I was asked to sit in the front row of one side. I always feel ner­vous when I am some­where I don’t have any­one near­by to talk to because every­one was talk­ing to each oth­er or doing some­thing and I didn’t know any­one there. I had no idea what to do with myself. The pro­gram start­ed and the guy who was con­duct­ing the event start­ed explain­ing the pur­pose of the gath­er­ing. He used words like com­mu­ni­ty and con­nec­tion, and said some­thing about every­one par­tic­i­pat­ing. “What have I got­ten myself into?” exact­ly my first thought! It’s not like I have nev­er been a part of some­thing like this but it takes time for me to start feel­ing com­fort­able and join in.

He start­ed with body move­ments, arms, feet, leg, tor­so etc. Every­one was fol­low­ing him and I was just sit­ting there look­ing at him, not know­ing what to do with myself. Peo­ple were clap­ping their hands, tap­ping their feet, try­ing to pro­duce rhythms with their bod­ies. I decid­ed that if any­one asked me why I am not par­tic­i­pat­ing then I would just say that I am here to observe. I tried to look stern and con­fi­dent to show that I am very much com­fort­able with myself and I am just not inter­est­ed in those exer­cis­es, even though I felt like run­ning away from there. I was afraid of being seen by some­one I know doing those weird things. It would be so embar­rass­ing for me! I would just tell that imag­i­nary per­son that I know I am very rigid and there is noth­ing wrong with being rigid.

Before I joined that group, I was sit­ting in the smok­ing room with some peo­ple, almost eight years younger than me, and one more guy who I know only by name and face. I always sit in that bal­cony when­ev­er I am there. Those young peo­ple were very com­fort­ably smok­ing there from which I guessed it was noth­ing new for them. They were nice, talk­a­tive and full of life. It was good to see how con­fi­dent and informed they were. They were talk­ing about how their par­ents don’t allow them to pur­sue cer­tain things but they still find a way to not let their wish­es die with­out being ful­filled.

Two very dif­fer­ent events, same evening, same place, seem­ing­ly dis­con­nect­ed, taught me the same les­son. We grow up lis­ten­ing to dos and donts, rights and wrongs, always under the scruti­ny of peo­ple around us. There is always some­one we are sup­posed to be afraid of, be it a super­nat­ur­al being or an earth­ly one. We grow up lis­ten­ing to things like “sit like this”, “eat like this”, “don’t talk like this”, “don’t dress like this”, “don’t do this”, “don’t do that”. And our elders think that we don’t do things we are told not to do behind their backs. We are not allowed to ques­tion. We are not allowed to express. We grow up into rigid adults who find it extreme­ly hard to be com­fort­able with them­selves because we are so used to being scru­ti­nized all the time that we are always sub­con­scious­ly afraid of being seen, being our­selves. We have become very good at pre­tend­ing to be obe­di­ent when our super­vi­sors are around and being our rebel­lious selves behind their backs.

I real­ized that my rigid­i­ty comes from being scru­ti­nized all the time as a kid. My fam­i­ly had an idea about how I should be and they start­ed try­ing to mold me that way, with­out stop­ping to think if the life with­in me was sup­posed to be mold­ed or not. There is noth­ing wrong with teach­ing your kids val­ues like kind­ness and love and friend­ship, but forc­ing them to be the kids you want them to be doesn’t seem to do any good to any­one. They grow up, start learn­ing about the out­side world, come across new inter­est­ing things like music, the­ater, dance, cul­tures, philoso­phies and things you nev­er exposed them to because you thought that they should con­cen­trate on their stud­ies because that’s what’s impor­tant for them, try­ing to fill their thirst for life with junk and clothes and things com­plete­ly use­less for a mean­ing­ful life.

You can­not mold or stop life. It’s a force beyond your con­trol. If you con­trol it from here, it will find a way out from there. It will always find a way to breathe if you try to suf­fo­cate it. Then what’s the point of try­ing to con­trol it and always be in a con­flict with it when you can actu­al­ly see it grow and even learn from it?
P.S. I end­ed up enjoy­ing that event a lot and I hope I will be smart enough to be there the next time it hap­pens because I don’t want to be rigid any­more.