On your own

Animal, the movie was frought with questionable content. Ranbir Kapoor's character, in the midst of craving for validation, said something that was very atypical of his personality. He indicated that happiness is our choice. We are born needing our mother's bosoms, cradled in love and adulation that makes us feel welcome. Then come the teenage years where we struggle to find identity, to understand our conditioning and how we relate to the world. It is a difficult phase, everyone around is hitting puberty, high on aggression and rebellion. Never is validation as important as those years when we struggle to be accepted. We have all had circumstances where we changed our behviour, our world view to suit the world around us, to gain acceptance.

If we work hard and luck favors, we move on to have good careers. We meet new people, have seemingly intelligent conversations. Learn money, responsibility, wine tasting. Work hard to achieve targets, only to strive for yet another target till we are sucked into the system. It is easy to lose oneself in a world where the system attempts to control. If we are lucky, we find a partner we can talk to and decide to spend our life with. Marriage brings in it's own expectations, it's own complications. Often we lose ourselves to yet another system. If we dont, we are deemed to be problematic women who do not work for the society. Few of us truly accept that blame and find peace. Others have troubled lives, often dealing with emotionally unavailable partners. We then have children and seek validation and acceptance from them, as they navigate their lives under similar circumstances.

Our entire life is spent living for the system. Happiness is in fleeting moments, like a glass of wine, a movie, a night on the beach, always conditional, always slipping through our fingers. Most of us never really have the independence, the true freedom to really be ourselves. We are caught in the web of lies that spins stories of unconditional love, of support and acceptance. I have always believed that happiness is our choice. This choice is frought by the acute need to be ignorant of everyone around you, of their expectations and their emotions. Is our happiness a responsibility one should burden another with? Is that a burden one should take upon oneself? All pressing questions.

Makes you realize that this decision is your own. That when it really comes down to what you need, you are on your own. No other person that looks at you through conditional eyes can ever be what you are to yourself. Choose yourself, its your best bet. Make the decision to be happy for you.