Freedom from meaningless obligations.
Meaningless obligations are something whose true purpose I have been trying to understand, for quite some time, but haven’t been able to do so till now. In particular, I wanted to write on meaningless obligations that we all follow every other day, knowingly or unknowingly. Now you will ask, hey, what do you mean by meaningless obligations in the first place?
Well as per my experience and human behavior understanding, all those norms, rituals, expectations and patterns which we follow in our lives, for which we have to cover up our natural self, unwillingly, with a certain degree of discomfort can be put into this category.
I, for the most part of the day, try to be a very rational and logical person, especially when it comes to following certain things or norms. My realm of rationality doesn't include reasons like “Well in our times we used to do it like that only…”, “Nikhil it has always been this way before… you can’t unfollow it just because it is an expired idea and is utterly meaningless, you have to have a more logical reason to not adhere to it. Because it has been happening since ages, so it must be preserved”. What my point is, what if we could be totally free from any such obligations and just be our actual self. Just because something is ancient, it does not have to be right. Life would be so much lighter if we and everyone around us can be the clear, genuine, true version of ourselves without intentionally hurting or offending anyone. By not following a mechanical behavioral guideline script laid down by our society and relatives.
To give an example, when one of my friends got married, she had to be quite formal. She felt necessarily obliged to follow certain things in the presence of her in-laws and relatives. It could be as simple a thing as getting up at 6 in the morning when she actually wants to sleep till 9 like every other day. She feels if she doesn't get up early she will be judged, and the only way of pleasing her in-laws is by causing herself involuntary discomfort. Let me present another incident. We all have experienced this, that as a child whenever we visited family friends or relatives, and we were offered something, first we had to say ‘no’. That is what we were taught by our elders. It was not considered very ‘courteous’ to say ‘yes’ in the first go. I remember when I was young, during the summer holidays I visited my cousins’ house. They were mostly elder to me and while we visited a nearby market they offered to buy me something. I always liked the fancy pencil boxes that my classmates carried with them to the class. I asked them that I wanted one. We roamed from shop to shop until I finalized one. Later I overheard my mom speaking to my aunt, that my cousins didn’t quite like it and I should have said no. I was like, dude why did you ask then?
How do I know when you are genuinely wanting to offer something or it’s out of obligation? As a practice, I consciously try to avoid saying things just for the sake of saying . I don’t go to my boss and say, “hey you are doing an awesome job” like everyone else when I actually know it's not true. If someone offers me something I gladly accept it and thank them for it. I trust them to be genuine, and not acting out of unnecessary obligation.
Each one of you must have gone through multiple such instances in your life where you have projected your no as yesses and yesses as nos. When I feel myself falling into this trap of meaningless obligations, I just like to ask these questions to myself from time to time. “How much percentage of you was actually ‘you’ today? What if you could be more ‘you’ and less ‘them’?”
I always cross-question, my parents, when they do something just out of obligation, like them sending 2 kgs of sweets to a close relative during Diwali, ( a major festival in India ) who has diabetes problems and will surely give it to the maid. But you see, it still needs to be done. It’s a ritual, an obligation, which not done poses a threat to them that certain imaginary things may go wrong. They feel satisfied doing it. I sit perplexed pondering over the meaninglessness of all such exchanges. Something insides us pushes us to not be our self. We are all expected to follow a certain pattern during meetups and conversations.
What does being yourself mean? To be able to express and say what you feel in a way that you don’t feel judged and your identity threatened. Letting go of redundant obligations would certainly make our lives more fulfilling.
