Our lives are such that we are hardly ever out of questions. Just taking a glance at a few popular and most recurring ones will bear witness to this. What’s up? How are you? Where are you? Where are you going? Who are you going with? When will you come back? When will you call again? When will you meet again? When will you marry? When will you buy a new house? When will you get a new car? Or asking differently, why do you judge so much? Why do you interfere so much? Why do you shop so much? Why do you worry so much? Why do you fight so much? Why do you cling so much? Why do you eat so much? Why do you sleep so much? And the list goes on and on. Ironically, however, we are often out of mind, out of control, out of order, out of wits, out of phone credit, out of cash, out of classroom, out of job but never ever out of questions. As if the sole end of life is mundane enquiry.
Despite these day-to-day interrogations, one question that has always dominated our early teen years without exception and sexism (since it is posed to both men and women) is: what would you want to be when you grow up? The response, as you would admit, is as common as the question itself. For our young males the typical and clichéd replies are: I want to be an engineer, an army officer, a police officer, a CSP officer, a magistrate, a judge or a politician. Whereas for young females it is confined to being a doctor, a teacher, or a happy wife (although most prioritized but least expressed)
This precision and spontaneity makes one wonder about the whereabouts of all the other career choices such as: sportsmanship, leadership, entrepreneurship, psychologist, artist, journalist, scholar, philosopher, lawyer, gardener, farmer, counsellor, mathematician, musician, librarian, chef, chauffeur, accountant, counsellor, spiritual heeler, or beautician. And one really worries about where they all disappeared. One asks did somebody do a prioritisation of a handful of professions? Or did somebody imbue us with a disdain for alternatives? Or did we get used to giving predictable, automated and ready-made answers? Whatever the findings, could we ever muster the courage to blame ourselves for this lop-sidedness? Well, partly, yes. This is because we chose not to stand up against the mainstream thoughts or trends. We chose not to challenge the unchallenged trend-setters. We chose to submit ourselves unreflectively and empowered the untrammelled traditions to persist and narrow our life choices to a cherry-picked few and comforted ourselves with our most favourite antidepressant: kismet mein likha tha (it was destined/pre-determined).
Today when we realize this we can at least try not to continue blaming our society alone for its members’ shape and make it. Instead we can take a few daily moments to sit ourselves down to introspect every nook and crony of our beings to know who we are and what we want and where we are headed
So weak we are. Alas, so timid we are that we cannot speak our hearts out to our dear ones without a guilty or blasphemous heart. This is because our society has never valued empowering and decentralizing others. It has never experienced detachment from mainstream thoughts. It has never made it an agenda to make us autonomous beings of our choices, rationality & expression. Much contrary, it has merely imposed on us its untested values impairing us from developing our own sense of the self and the world around us.
Today when we realize this we can at least try not to continue blaming our society alone for its members’ shape and make it. Instead we can take a few daily moments to sit ourselves down to introspect every nook and crony of our beings to know who we are and what we want and where we are headed. This will set a beginning in the long process of transformation. As it will prepare us to relinquish our clinginess to societal pressures, expectations and norms and experience the distinctiveness of our existence and come up with new answers to our old questions. Such that our answers will outgrow the likes of the past and we would want to be our true selves, true potential and true identity. Let us all, then, take a step-up pledge with ourselves that we will not bow to the unchallenged structures and take every opportunity to unfold ourselves to the greatest summit of our existence.
Easier said than done. This is possible if instead of spending our valuable time on asking everyday questions and repeating automated responses we focus on finding our passions and interests and pursue them even if we fall behind the herd mentality. In this way our society will have diversity of professions and a culture of valuing one’s calling for its own sake will nurture. The net result will be a heterogeneous society with elbow space for difference and divergence which at the moment is painfully lacking. To this end parents can play up a pivotal role for this institution is the hub of many of our life choices. They should take special caution to expose their children to a spectrum of options, alternates and career pathways so as to channelize an evolving society and flourishing and fulfilling members.
The writer is a permanent teaching faculty at ‘Pakistan College of law’