Oh boy, how difficult it can be for your parents to understand you? I'll answer: VERY VERY MUCH (especially if your age difference is over 30 years...) If clothes represent personalities and mentalities, then just seeing the picture below, speaks volumes...
There was an engagement party of a relative today and while speaking with my mom, I declared that engagements and marriages and all this fuss is unnecessary and a bit silly. And the response I got was : "Are you crazy? Gosh, what kind of daughter did I raise up? You are not speaking with your mind clear. How will you baptize your child? " etc etc along these lines...The one sighing should be me...If love exists then what does a community and religious ritual add? NOTHING. Don't tell me that, if you are married, you are more sure your partner won't commit adultery...Whether with a ring or without, love and faith exist in a person's heart and cheating has to do with change of heart, with lack of communication, with boredom, with not being clear what you want from the other, with deeper psychological traumas. NOT because you weren't virgin (father lives in Middle East spirit, in old old very old times...) and NOT because there wasn't a
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| HAHAHA, unfortunately for you, conservative ladies and gentlemen, we don't live in the cave ages... |
If we must follow a tradition because it may give us some extra money, no thank you. If we must follow because it's not bad to keep tradition and we should respect it, think twice! Speaking for the west world that is influenced by Christianity mostly, I have to say this: why should I oblige to a custom that has its roots in Bible and that was totally cruel, making woman an object -well woman was an object in most societies till the 20nth century- ? Why should I have a precious union with the person I love the most dipped into insulting to women religious commands and 'wishes'? Why do I ever need to give word to a god I cannot see, I cannot feel, who can't decide ,if he's merciful or merciless, who claims to know everything and be allmighty and yet he created humans who fell from Paradise and guide a destructive live on Earth and does nothing about it, hiding himself behind the dubious notion of free will? A god who led a war and killed a man that performed interrupted coitus because the woman who was sleeping with was his dead brother's (old testament), a god who urges me to forget about my family and friends and follow him? NO, THANKS.
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The conversation I had with my mother reminded me of the following conversation (Kino no Tabi anime):
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| "What will happen, if I don't undergo the operation that will turn me into adult?" |
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| Huh??? |
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| First it was surprise, then disgust and next is |
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| "Fool! What do you think that you're saying? You, little, ungrateful girl!" |
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| "She's a failure! She's a total failure!" -Yeah, sure...just because Kino's mind started thinking, you idiotic sheeps! |
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| "Children are property of their parents..." |
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| "...and they have the right to wip off their failures." |
That episode was one of those that leave a great impact -although almost all Kino no Tabi's episodes are that deep- and it stresses the madness of adults' 'logic'. "With our common sense as adults, its unimaginable that someone would jump in front of a knife with his own will" says inspector. Adults' world is represented as a world without feelings and high ideals. And that IS true to a great extent. Most adults avoid getting emotionally involved in many situations and try to explain everything with logic. The result is a crazy world like the one pictured surrealistically in the "Land of Adults". Just think what this episode does. As fairy tales externalize the inner world, making the good guy handsome as well and the bad ugly, Kino no Tabi transcribes what happens in a psychological and mental stage to reality. Children undergo an operation to become adults, hence people who can do their jobs with a smile, even when they don't like it.
Adults in our world end up doing unpleasant things and try to convince themself that 'that's life' and that things couldn't be otherwise, so they continue living in misery. The worst though is that they try to impose their sad lifestyle on their children as well. Young people who have dreams of becoming something out of the ordinary are faced with contempt. Adults think that happiness lies in making good money and by having a stable job. BUT is it better to do something half-heartedly, "destroying" in the process both yourself and the others whom you work with? As for the stability factor, the unwanted truth is that stability doesn't belong to the present, much more in the future.
In Kino's country there weren't adolescents. Why? Because its a very tough period of everyone's life, when we try to find ourselves, we revolute and object hence think and critisize, try our limits and the limits of the people around us and form our dreams and future plans. Adults can't handle adolecence- it's an unpleasant, hard-to-deal-with situation. They are constantly reminded of their dreams and the self they have betrayed. That's painful. No one admits his/her mistakes with a smile on the lips. They don't want anyone to tell them their life went wrong, they don't wanna change anything, because change needs psychological strength, requires willpower and to get rid off what you've become comfortable with, even if that something is hurting them, constricting them and has 0 value for their well-being.
Parents think that their children are their property, little dolls or robots that do not age and their purpose is to fulfill their wishes, achieve what they didn't and to become replicas of them, because they are always right, they are 'logic', they 'know best', they do everything they do 'for our own good'. When we oppose they try to kill us. Kill our hopes, break our wings, because if they can't fly, they can't allow anyone to... They take the knife and try to mutilate us little by little starting with our sexuality and then follow our freedom and right to pleasures (and of course I don't mean to promote drugs, alcohol or sex mania or any kind of addiction. I talk about pleasures that help us enrich our mind, seathe our soul and become 'whole personalities'). They are absolute and extreme, exaggerating and manipulating. They are led by fear or envy. But they should know better. They can't have always the control.
And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, "Speak to us of Children."
And he said:
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts.
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
From 'The Prophet' by Kahlil Gibran. And follows a poem of a girl that suicided and was Buscaglia's student, her 'voice' is often 'heard' in his books.
My happiness is me, not you.Michellle
Not only because you may be temporary,
But also because you want me to be what I am not.
I cannot be happy when I change
Merely to satisfy your selfishness.
Nor can I feel content when you critcise me for not
thinking your thoughts,
Or for not seeing like you do.
You call me a rebel.
And yet each time I have rejected your beliefs
You have rebelled against mine.
I do not try to mold your mind.
I know you are trying hard enough to be just you.
And I cannot allow you to tell me what to be--
for I am concentrating on being me.
You said that I was transparent
And easily forgotten
But why then did you try to use my lifetime,
To prove to yourself who you are?
Interesting graphics. I wonder how the beach picture will look like in 2100 :P
ReplyDeleteAh yes, Kahlil Gibran is a great poet! :)
It sounds like you had a terrible experience talking to your mother... No offense to your mother intended, but one of my favorite quotes is this: "Never argue with idiots - they lower you to their level and beat you with experience."
If you know that your mother strongly disagrees with you on some topics, don't bring them up. She can't dictate what you can and can't do, so you'll do what you think is appropriate, regardless of her opinion.
I searched hard on the net to find something good to depict the gap generation. Hm, I don't think, there'll be much changes in 2100. Almost all kind of fashions has appeared and now it gets recycled every once in awhile, Now, for the swimwear, perhaps a gymnist fashion may return, but I don't think anything new will appear :P
ReplyDeleteWell, my mother is generally better than my step-father. She's more modest. Dad is the real problem. And it's not like I die bringing up problematic topics. He brings them up...And there is no offence. My mother is not the wittiest person on earth and father surely is a bit nuts supporting illiberal ideas of decades ago...
I just try to be patient one more year. I finish studies, make my own money and leave here. I'll do my own life, at last.
This article is... so much win!
ReplyDeleteBeing adults is hard. Being parents is harder.
That's why I don;t want to have kids. I don't think I can be a good mother.
@Kencana: I understand your scepticism on becoming a parent. I share some of it, too. But when you fall in love deeply and feel safe that the person besides you will support you and could be a great parent, too, you start changing perspective. You want to carry inside you the fruit of your love with that special someone. I also see it as wanting to give someone the chances, love and understanding I wasn't given. I mean, too many irresponsible and problematic people bear children. If more normal people don't raise up healthy children, the world will be screwed...
ReplyDelete