A Lifelong Tagline

“BUS ISSE TO GUSSE SE APNI BAAT MANVANI AATI HAI”

What is that one tagline you have been associated with since your childhood?

I have been told that I don’t have patience and I get angry very easily.

So the story goes like this….

I was the youngest of three sisters, always being told to just follow them

“Follow your elders, you are lucky to have two elder sisters, you can learn from their

experiences.”

Yes, I was lucky to have two elder sisters. Yes, I got many chances to learn from their

experiences, but was it necessary that I could not have any experiences of my own?

My wishes, and my aspirations would have only been right if they matched with the aspirations of my sisters, otherwise, they are wrong. I cannot decide on the clothes I choose to wear; I cannot decide on the friends I choose to be with, I cannot decide for the hobby classes I want to enrol in, I cannot decide on the career path I want to choose for myself, I cannot even decide for the partner I want to spend my life with.

Where do you think it has always hit? Today when I look back, I see I had no individuality of my own. Whenever I tried to have one it was either told wrong or just snubbed. My decisions were either wrong according to them or childish. When I reached the age where everyone is expected to make their own decisions, I started doubting my decisions and everything about myself. It made me loose my confidence to the core. I could not decide for my career path, what studies should I pursue, I could not decide what clothes I should wear, I always started looking for external validation. If my parents will agree with this only then my decision will be fine for me. In every aspect of my life, in colleges, in friend circle everywhere, I started looking for someone who could hand-hold me, who could take my decisions. Or else, my every decision should go to different panel of judges before implementing to get that external validation.

So, how would it make me as a person in constant self doubt looing for external validation.

Decision taking is the most integral part of emotional intelligence which is never taught in

schools. Our progress is always measured based on knowledge, learning, memory and what not. But what makes us a complete human being, power to choose or free will to decide for yourself.

This is that one thing which differentiates us from other species. We learn it from our own

experiences, analysing our decisions every now and then with each experience, which develops our personality and makes us a person as a whole. Constant snubbing of your decisions, counter proving your own ones above your children's decisions, and above all if you react and still want to take your own ones, you are being judged as the youngest child, who doesn’t listen to her parents and always want to get her wishes fulfilled with anger, leaving no choice for parents other than to just accept. Just imagine where your child will end up.

Yes, I was there…..I AM NOT GOOD ENOUGH and I WAS ALWAYS GET ANGRY

Even today when I visit my parents’ house, I get angry in just two days then I start longing to come back. Because after so many years whatever individuality I have gathered for myself, it gets lost there. Yet somehow, now I am being judged in terms of what my sisters have done or not done. I chose to meet each of them alone because the moment even one of them is with our parents, I start feeling like...I'm a nobody...

This is the influence which taglines carry in our life.

Now at forty, I am realizing that decisions which I have taken for myself, against my parents’ wishes only are paying me in the long run. All the decisions which they had taken for me they remained just decisions … they never got converted into life.

Would you like to be a mother of such a child who is not able to take decisions? Would you not want them to experience from their own learnings by taking their own decisions?

What is that one tagline that you were being associated with but after reflecting on it now, you feel you were not wrong, it’s the situations which made you like that? And after this awareness what is that you would like to change today to have a better present and future for yourself and for your children?