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, January 19, 2020
 
I am feeling quite weird as birthday eve approaches. This is unlike any birthday I remember purely for having no family around me. I knew I might feel a bit odd on or around the day because all these years I have managed to be with family on this day no matter where I was in the world. This year is perhaps the first exception. Guess I want to reassure myself that this is not the exception that will break the rule for I had made it into some sort of a rigid rule... that is the only way it had remained unbroken for so long. The fact that I was able to do this also cemented my belief that if you really want to do something, you can. No matter how difficult it is. And I could have done it this year too... except that it would have meant giving a higher weightage to a rule than to a work ethic for one, and it would have also meant that I was not ready to make some of the sacrifices that I needed to make for what I dearly wished to accomplish this year. Well, I feel like I made the best decision under the circumstances but it nevertheless doesn't make me feel less blue today for all that. Though feeling blue before and on my birthday is something natural for me (as my readers perhaps know by now!).

An observation I have been making recently is that in modern times festive occasions be they Christmas, New Year's, birthdays tend to generate anxiety and pressure to have fun to actually be fun. If I like nothing more than curling up on the sofa, eating great food, listening to nice music, having good conversations while the clock ticks into the new year, I somehow feel guilty for 'not having fun' or not 'doing something fun'. It's almost as if what I really like to do is simply a poor excuse for not knowing how to have fun; the fact that I actually enjoy my kind of fun is immaterial. This artificially constructed or imposed upon guilt doesn't allow me to enjoy my kind of fun either. I might then force myself to comply with other people's idea of fun because I am anxious about missing out on this mythic 'fun'. The occasion becomes not so much about having fun itself but about proving to all and sundry that I had socially desirable 'fun'. I can even participate in the 'who had more fun' picture contest on social media...which adds a bit of a competitive element to the ‘fun’. No wonder it’s stressful to have fun! 
I was asked by someone if I was excited about my birthday. I didn't know how to respond because I am not excited about growing older and I have nothing specifically to be excited about as I would likely be at home doing nothing. This question itself put me on the defensive for afore-mentioned reasons. When I celebrate my birthday at home I have the usual fun-appropriate 'going out with family' response but saying I was just going to enjoy by myself at home is to pretty much ask for a 'you must do something fun' response. It seems to me that festive occasions have lost all their spontaneity and charm and been stripped of all fun because it's no longer about what you would like to do or not to do if that's what you would like to do. It's about conforming to society's ideas of what you should do or be seen to do if you want to fit in as someone who ‘has fun’ or ‘is fun’, and that doesn’t sound like much fun. Which is why we probably heave a sigh of relief when these high-pressure fun occasions are gone and we don't have to answer to anyone about how we are having fun. We are free to actually have fun on our terms.
Well, I'll be having my version of fun (or none—no pressure!) tomorrow.... and hoping that I don't have to miss out on a key aspect of what makes up my fun next year and beyond... may this year's exception to the rule only prove the rule :)

posted by Sylvia D'souza at 5:07 am 0 comments
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