The equation is simple, you have children, they grow up and they move out. The only way for them to grow, to develop and to become people that they can live with, is for them to have the room to grow into who they are….who they are, not who we want them to be.
Let’s back it up a little, we have a problem- a big problem, and it is hardly ever talked about. Though every year our little country celebrates its independence so feverously, independence is a concept we have never even begun to understand, let alone forgotten.
It starts from a young age, as it does around the world, our clothes, friends and careers are chosen for us before we have even managed to make it out of the womb; but what doesn’t happen around the world, what should never happen, is that this control and lack of human autonomy continues, swiftly past our puberty, deep into adulthood. For some marriage is the sweet escape they seek, for others it is much graver.
I did not manage to move out of my parents home until I was 24, and that felt too late. Falling under the false belief that I knew it all and could do it all, I left home to do this whole adult thing, and instantly I felt paralysed. To say the next few months were a breeze would be a lie. I knew nothing; nothing of how the world works, how my own mind works. In the last two years I have come to discover so much about myself, that is inherent to my person; things that never occurred to me before. I believed myself to be an organised and meticulous person, yet I came to enjoy my chaos in solitude. I thought I a sociable being, wanting to be surrounded by hoards of people at all times, instead I found my time with myself to be the most rewarding. Were these habits I had held on to for eons my own, or were they imposed on me by the people I lived with?
In experiencing the liberation I have enjoyed in the past two years, much of my time has also gone to pitying and worrying about those late-twenty-something’s living with Amma and Abba, being chauffeured around by a driver and waited on hand and foot by their maids.
Truth is, much as living with my parents was a convenient and comfortable option, jumping out of their skin to find one that fits a bit better (my own) was what I needed; and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
I was left wondering; by protecting us, do our parents actually take away our ability to cope in the real world, do they rob us of ourselves in trying to make us suitable for their society?
Now, I know some people cannot afford to move away from their parents, I understand that sometimes it is just not an option, logistically. However, I know countless people who feel compelled to stick to this arrangement, because their parent’s won’t allow it, or because their own need for comfort too strong.
Whilst they mean well, our parents are beings of a different time; their values, way of life even aesthetic is so widely different to us. It makes you wonder, why are we so willing to relinquish our lives to them? Why do we barter our autonomy, personal development and independence in the name of material comfort.
I recall this significant itch, this resistance, this feeling of being controlled and coddled to the point where I wanted to scream. I recall this now, back then I chalked it up to being normal, everyday angst. Man was born free and our society shackles him to his grave. I was shackled; my clothes had to have my mother’s mark of approval, indulging a single craving was the largest act of rebellion I engaged in on a day to day basis. Looking around me, I know I am not alone.
We go to school, we come back home. We go to college and we find every reason to travel back to the motherland during every term-break and vacation. We taste the sweet joys of being ourselves for a few weeks, and then we chain ourselves again. It baffles me, I have not seen another such widespread phenomena that plagues us so silently, so efficiently. So much so, that we don’t even notice it.
I never had the luxury of living the dorm life at university, my entire adulthood was birthed under my parents’ roof, my very first taste of independence came at 24, and I fought long and hard for it. Tears, screaming matches, the works; it took every element of my being to take what was mine from birth. Do the rest of my kind not seek this because its too hard? Is that it, do we just want to avoid the chaos it will cause?
Huffington post recently published an article about how living on your own is an absolute requisite to sustaining a healthy adult life. One key point being that living alone helps you establish what you want from your life. Which leads us to one very simple yet loaded question; if you do not know who you are and what you want from life- how do you choose what to do with it?
Young Pakistani’s are pressured from a young age to make life altering decisions about their lives, from what they want to do for a living to who they want to live the rest of their lives with? If we cannot ascertain what we want from life, how to we ascertain how to get there?
Truth is, we end up living lives that were designed for us based on an out-dated blue-print; our decisions look good on paper, but in practice often fail to satisfy us. We struggle to sustain the personalities we have built from birth because the truth within us was lost decades before we had the consciousness to know the difference. We conform to a society that is not ours and was never meant for us; and we suffer for it.
If there is one thing I have learnt from living on my own for a mere two years, it is that I should have done it sooner, much sooner. I urge you to shed the faux layers of comfort that your have built around yourself and find what it is you were meant to find. Be the person you were born to be, do the things you were born to do. After all we get all but one shot at this.
I leave you with a question and a quote from one of my favourite poems:
“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” – Mary Oliver
