“How come you are not married?”
That’s the question that started the conversation. She flashed her diamond ring as she asked her friend.
Silence.
Three seconds later her friend responds.
“Ha, God will do my own too. I’m still praying for open doors.”
Now, the asked believes she doesn’t exist in the space of open doors. Even if she is healthy, even if she can work and even she has achieved other things, there is still a closed door in her life. That shut door makes her life incomplete.
On another hand, if one is to dig into the issue, one would realise that that door seems shut because society—friends, family, and acquaintances—expect her, by this age, to have been married. She too, as a member of a community, has been kissed by the negative whispers. She needs to get married. That door must be open or she will break into it.
By looking at life through her friend’s goggles, unhappiness begins to creep in. And those questions: why am I not where she is? Maybe she is happy because she is married? I would never be happy until I am married. Unknown to her, she attracts unhappiness. Defined by other’s expectation, she lives fully and only to fulfil the definitions of her friend.
At the end of the day, when she finds love, another expectation will present itself. And she will bounce on it. Then, at the end of life, she would realise that she had been living for others and not for herself.
That’s thinking plagues society today. Many can’t seem to live life by their own terms. Their existence is based solely on other people’s expectation. Questions like why haven’t you done this and why haven’t you done that? are the daily things that they carry in their mind. The satisfaction of these questions begin to be their daily pursuit and they end up caught in a web of fulfiling the needs of others. This leads to fear, depression and addiction.
The psycologist, James Hollis, in his book argues that until one “keep[s] an appointment with our inner life,” which means leading life by our own inner intuition, one would never find happiness. There is a sense of meeting life’s daily challenges with one’s own defined actions. The family influence, the societal influence and the economic influences should play second in the logical scheme of things. The definition of success should be solely influenced by the inner self. It is hard work but it has its own benefits when one lives by one’s terms.
I am on twitter: @moshoke
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