How old are you? When are you getting married? When are you planning to have a baby? Is there any problem? Why have you put on so much weight? What will people say? Why are you going out at night? Who were you with? Why do you hang out with guys? The questions are endless. Have you ever been bogged down by these questions?
Post my previous blog post, when I asked my readers what they would like to read about, among many of the responses I received on Instagram and WhatsApp, this was something I could instantly connect to “How to pay deaf ears to society’s demands?”. Having been affected by these questions for most of my life and learning to handle them, it has been a journey and I am sure a lot of you are on this journey too.
To begin with, let’s look into the purpose of a society, why does it even exist? Well, in my understanding society was created as a support system. A safety net to hold us when we fall. But, over the centuries due to various reasons, society has turned into a place that makes us feel the most unsafe. We build armours of various kinds to protect ourselves from our society not realizing that we are not separate from society rather we are part of it. By rejecting society, we are rejecting a part of ourselves.
Why does society have expectations from us, do they really have expectations from us or are they our own insecurities or expectations of ourselves that trigger us? I am leaving it to you to ponder upon.
Knowing that society is conditioned to function in a certain way (when I say society, we are a part of it too) how do we respond to it? Can we change the society? Maybe or maybe not, but what we can change is the way we respond to questions that come our way.
Here’s how I approach them.
1. Trusting my choices: the first and most important step is to trust my choices while giving myself room to fail. Either way I learn something and move forward without feeling a need to prove it to anybody. In that way, I am embracing self-acceptance and eliminating the fear of self-judgement.
2. Knowing their intent: when a question is thrown at me, I try to understand the intent of that question. Largely the intent is either goodwill (in their terms) or curiosity.
3. Empathize: I try to see the question from their frame and understand that they don’t see my frame. Acknowledge that they have been conditioned to think in a certain way that I don’t have control over.
4. Acknowledge their intent: Let them know that I see their intent and respect it.
5. Communicate: seek permission to present them with my frame “Would you like to know how I see it?” if I think it’s important or just smile away.
This has helped me build genuine relationships that respect my choices even though they don’t understand them. And I know when I fall, they will stand by me coz I have chosen to stand by myself.
When you are triggered by these questions next time, ask yourself “What about this question that holds the power to trigger me?” Or “What have you not accepted about yourself?” and you’ll know the answer.
I would like to leave you all with a quote from Anthony DeMello’s book titled Awareness. He says “You’re more likely to respond accurately when you perceive clearly”
Cheers!!
P.S. The representational image is a painting titled “Human Interactions Are Simple Yet Complex” by Artist Sapna Anand, you can check out her beautiful work here.
My heartfelt gratitude to her for this collaboration.