I write this in times of lock down’s of varying degrees around the world including where I am (Singapore)… and thanks to social media, people are trying to motivate each other by sharing how this is the time which everyone dreams of – spouse’s getting to spend time with each other, kids getting more attention and less burden of education, getting more things at home done with employers also understanding the decreased productivity with work from home, etc… and yet the truth is that spending time alone or with family, whilst may have appeared in some way on wish list of instagram or facebook posts of many earlier… is not really fun for almost everyone of us right now…
Forget being enjoyable… But why does it feel so painful to adjust into something that one may have wished for earlier?
Jainee’s (my wife) & our personal trainer were talking during one of the workout sessions about how women were subjected to undue expectations and forced into a role… I decided to brave it and chimed in… so do men… stereotyping is both ways… The real reason I believe women felt that they were the victims was because the role they are forced into is not respected as much compared to the role that is expected from the men to play…
Its interesting isn’t it… its not the role or duties that are inherently by default an issue… different things appeal to different people… its the force on someone to accept a specific role that makes someone feel like a victim (whilst for someone else its enjoyable)…
I have related an interesting real life episode I heard in human library before… A Caucasian women was into setting up of a distribution network for high end liquor in Middle East (cannot get more difficult than this right)… she visited a local colleagues home for an office colleagues dinner and was as per local customs asked to sit with the wives of the colleagues… though taken aback, her indignation soon gave way when she realized that these women were highly educated, pretty and intelligent but were now into raising children and being homemakers… she felt bad as to how they had to constantly cover themselves and how their talent was being wasted… but not to sound rude, she brought nothing up about it… at the time of leaving, the hostess with the most genuine affectionate feeling, said to this woman… I hope you get married soon so that you do not have to work for money and expose yourself like this to other men! The pity she felt for the middle eastern women was the same pity the middle eastern women felt for her…
So it is not wearing the burqa that is inherently an issue… nor is wearing a modern revealing dress… It is not being a home maker and nurturer that is an issue… nor is the working for money either…
One of my most favorite parable is about Sir Lancelot marrying an horrendously ugly old witch to help King Arthur… The witch pleased with Lancelot’s moral values, gives Lancelot a choice… She would be her horrible deformed self only half the time and a beautiful maiden the other half… Which would he prefer? Beautiful during the day….or night. Lancelot pondered the predicament. During the day, a beautiful woman to show off to his friends & family, but at night, in the privacy of his castle, an old witch? Or, would he prefer having a hideous witch during the day, but by night, a beautiful woman for him to enjoy wondrous, intimate moments? And he answers – she can choose whatever she wants… And the witch pleased with the answer decides to be beautiful throughout…
Sir Issac Newton whom most know as the one who discovered gravity, made a lot of classical physics theories… And he believed that this whole universe was nothing but a big machine following the rules set in motion… hence in reality there was no impact of our free will or choice and what is destined to happen will happen… However quantum physics – and what many people might have heard – the Schrodinger’s cat experiment speaks about how there are multiple possibilities and one can never be sure what directions the world could take… it is a matter of choice!
And with the use of the word CHOICE in this article for the first time, I start with my own thoughts…
The issues start in all of the above when we perceive we do not have a choice… we are OK with anything and nothing is sacrosanct right or wrong – as long as we have chosen it… we will tolerate pain, we will be ok to struggle, we will feel happy, we will feel satisfied… if we believe we have made the choice…
It is like telling the kids not to do something… the curiosity in a young kid makes it irresistible for them not to do it then… and for a teenager the force makes them rebel and want to do it… but leave it open after explaining the logic… and most of the time they will take the right decision even as kids and teenagers… once left to their choice… One can genuinely argue the same for adult woman as well – it sounds ridiculous that to feel free and modern, the image is to be able to drink and smoke, have multiple relationships, wear clothes that some traditional norms may not agree to and do everything else that man should also ideally themselves must not be doing… but it is because they are told not to do those things which then by definition, boxes those things into the symbol of their choice and freedom (for all the other things are not being forced anyways… so where does following things where there is no expectations or force showcase their choice?)…
Of course this concept of choice or free will… works within a boundary till an extent… there are times one feels immense regret for the choices one has made… and sometimes many wish not to be in a position to take a decision… but even in those trying times, the best a person wants is to be able to choose on whose decisions or directions they want to rely… still not having a direction forced on them…
Yes – a person who is forced can claim some solace in being a victim… however the cathartic satisfaction that comes from claiming to be a victim of force is generally rooted in the depth of depression, it does not really blossom in to any fruits of long lasting pleasure…
Also this choice, free will has limits of private and personal application… once one steps into the social, mass and national / world level… there will always be a need for objective rules that cannot be applied to subjective whims and fancies… To root out the Corona virus, the lock downs need to be applied… and for that even the tennis courts need to be closed… an avid tennis player’s claim that there is no proximity in the game and hence should be exempted for him, cannot be entertained… exceptions on mass level based on personal aspirations lead to massive failure of the objective… One can for example stay naked within closed doors and windows all they want… but nudity in public is still an issue if in general the society does not approve of it…
But its a very debatable idea… how much choice and free will should one have… democracy, autocracy, dictatorship – all forms of political systems are rooted in different philosophy around that belief… even in democracy, some countries apply the choice to people at different levels… for Corona virus control for example, China implemented military curfew and lock down with scarcely any information to its people on daily basis – the country believed that is the only way to implement social isolation with any success – no information required to be shared and no choice to be given… India implemented the lock down immediately when issue started gaining traction but still media and data is quite open to report the reality – believing people can digest the reality but should not have a choice… Singapore kept a very free and transparent communication, implemented things on phased manner and only when things got very serious after weeks of efforts implemented stricter rules – believing in its people to understand and adopt best practices as much as possible before taking choice of people away… So you see… its the trust in the same general people that the elected politicians themselves have, differs… And China has been relatively successful and so has Singapore been, compared to say United States in managing the Corona virus pandemic… Hence its not an straight forward answer for or against level of choice of people in non-personal matters…
However coming back to the personal level… this concept of free will and choice in Indian philosophy has been thought about many times… in Bhagwad Gita, Lord Krishna repeatedly preaches to Arjun (& to the world) via Bhakti Yog to surrender themselves (i.e. their choices and free will) to his wishes and that will lead to salvation… in Buddhism, Jainism and even Bhagwad Gita, there is repeated reinforcement to not get attached to the result of the action chosen (i.e. remove the importance we give to our choice) and be stithapragnya (unmoved and only an observer of the experience)…
The basic idea in Indian philosophy is that the importance we give to our free will and choice is essentially nothing but the manifestation of our ego… And the more we are attached to it, the more we are not – ironically – free… Hence to be truly free, we should not care about our choice… we should simply go through the motions and observe as a detached third party observer to everything including our own actions of what is happening in our experiences of the world…
But that essentially sounds and feels like a flat line on the ECG… dead… unmoving & unaffected… and the concept that are happy inherently does not correlate to our day to day experience… and whilst there are things which might be true that betray our sense experiences… but if we cannot feel something, we will not believe it – and conversely if we feel something, we will believe it… reality or not, true or false… does not matter…
And hence the fact & the bottom line is that we are happy when we feel we have a choice and are acting on our own volition… And it is also true that we can decide – we have a choice (even if we think we cannot control our feelings – it is lack of self control than anything else) of how we want to change our feeling about any situation in our life… we can pin the initial emotions down to our expectations, our experience of having free will or not, etc… and yet thereafter no matter what, we can choose what we want to do with our mood… We do have a choice… Hence if anyone thinks about anything – whether it is right or wrong at a personal level (at the deepest levels)… The only correct answer will be… its all about choice!
