Tag: Cultural Expectations

Categories
Poetry

Stop. Imagine.

Stop.

Imagine.

There is a human here and a human there.

Both are different, vastly so.

Human number one feels okay being bombarded with a box full of emails. He tackles them, one by one, and then he continues on to more busy things. He flies to the top of the work chain. He never rests. Not even when he’s sick. Successful. They say.

(Nobody can figure out why success looks like that.)

Human number two feels overwhelmed by emails and noise, so instead he chooses to paint. Beside the trees. He struggles with focus, but he needs to struggle with focus, because if he focused he’d lose his flow. His authentic flow. The thing within him that changes the lives of others in profoundly beautiful ways.

(Nobody can understand him. Nobody can figure out why he’s broken like that.)

He feels ashamed. He has a choice. He takes medication so he can be more like the first guy. Everybody breathes a sigh of relief.

He slowly dies inside.

And so does everyone around him because

where are all the beautiful things?

Imagine.

Stop.

All toxic cultures die.

Everybody is happy, being the person they were always meant to be.

Everybody.

The end.

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Categories
Life

Kaleidoscope Life

The rules of love and life.

So much grey, everywhere, all over the place.

Cultural differences. Familial differences. How could you ever say a person is wrong in their beliefs, traditions or values? And what do you do if one person in a relationship is satisfied with the chosen boundaries, and another is left feeling unfulfilled, unsupported, traumatised, even.

What do you do?

One mother may birth a child with the expectation that her job is simply to raise a child to adulthood and set her free when she comes of age. The child has been given life. She will be guided. She will be taught to fend for herself. But a mother is a mother, says the mother. Her boundaries are strict, yet fair, and she has no intention to provide for her child beyond basic care, until she dies. She has provided well, therefore, she has loved.

Another mother may birth a child with the expectation that her job has only just begun, and will never end. She is love, and she will give and give and give, in every way, to this child until her final breaths. She will provide the role of parent. She will provide the role of best friend and confidant. Her boundaries are far and wide: anywhere love lives, she and her daughter will wander, together, always. She has provided, therefore, she has loved.

What is a mother?

It is an individual question.

It is an individual answer.

And it is only one of the question answer combinations of life with no black or white answer to relieve us of conflict and struggle.

The rules of life and love.

There are none.

But there are many.

How easy it is to fight for our right to be right.

How difficult it is to find true peace amidst the chaos of life.

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