To Be or Not To Be

A little kingdom I possess,
Where thoughts and feelings dwell;
And very hard the task I find
Of governing it well.
~ Louisa May Alcott

...that more or less describes my situation!

~A Wise Man Said~

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
~ Aristotle
Sunday, September 08, 2019
 
Today is the Nativity feast or the birthday of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It happens to be one of the very few times that I am not at home celebrating it with everyone. I believe I have posted before about the rather traditional celebration that we have on this day, sort of doubling up as a harvest feast... the main items on the agenda are church, sweets, traditional meal (vegetarian).
 
I happened to speak to a relative today and her not-so-surprising question was, "Did you go to church?" I said, "No". Next question, "Are you going in the evening?" "No". "Why?" I debated whether to give the short answer which would be a false one or the long answer which could become a philosophical-theological one-sided argument but also like playing music to deaf ears so I settled for the short false one. 
I sensed myself feeling a bit exasperated after the phone call as I usually do when I am put in a position where I have to state something false because the other party is too closed-minded. I still think I couldn't have said anything otherwise but that irritates me even more. I recently mentioned how the Indian way of asking questions with lack of sensitivity to a different point of view puts me in a difficult corner because of my own sympathetic attitude to the questioner's ignorance on the one hand and distaste for diplomacy on the other. 
I thought about this person a bit more to see things from their worldview and realised that this person had seen so very little of the world outside their own cocoon bound up and entangled in relationships and their coercive demands that they could perhaps not envision someone doing whatever they pleased on a day or days that manifestly bring out these coercions and entanglements in the form of social rituals. The outer significance of these rituals is to bond together as a family or extended family and collectively thank God for past blessings and ask for more but the inner workings of it require you to subject yourself to the dominance of tradition or the ones who dominate in the name of tradition. There is simply no possibility of not going to church or one does not even imagine such acts as possibilities because in these setups one becomes a 'group' and what is impossible to the group ceases to be a possibility for an individual. It is only an individual who can question a tradition or choose not to follow one or customise it to suit themselves but in this monolith group all move in the same direction and a person's individuality or identity ceases to exist apart from the group. When I thought about it from this point of view I realised that this person was asking me a very genuine question. They couldn't even imagine how I was doing something that just did not fit in the scheme of this monolith group operation. And I guess my response was appropriate in that sense because it was made to be processed by someone within this group conformity scheme of things rather than a scheme where each person may do whatever they wish to without being subjected to a group will.
The more I think about it the more I marvel at the fact that had my life taken a few different turns I might have been swallowed up into this group institution. It's not at all to say that people are unhappy as a group because once you are in it you don’t even realise there's an alternative way to be, but being outside of it now I feel enormously glad that my life has turned out differently. That life wasn’t for me. Not because my life is a happier one but it certainly is one that I feel is truer to who I am. And that's what I am most thankful to Mother Mary for today… for leading me to a life where I am so much more freer to be myself (submitting to God’s will and no other man’s—at least to the extent that one can in this social world!).

posted by Sylvia D'souza at 10:27 pm 0 comments
HOME