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Our daily existence is an interplay between our agency and external forces. Most such extrinsic demands are not even explicit, let alone enforced, and yet the invisible gravity is so strong that it transcends generations. Take for instance the well defined and deeply entrenched gender roles, or what one ought to do at specific milestones of life. Education, employment, family, security, and self-preservation, and the cycle repeats all over again. The ironclad laws of being in a society seem to offer a quaint legitimacy, as if it renders immortality. Alas, it at least offers some cushioning against social security. But is it so?
The chasm between our external realities and internal compass is widening because our social logic hasn’t kept pace with our economic truths. In the heydays, a social outcast, even of the most innocuous kind, was sure to be dealt with the heavy hand of the clan. Reprimanded, distanced, abused and in most cases killed. A severed social tie didn’t leave much in terms of livelihood and it would mostly be a race between dying with hunger or with guilt. And since guilt was primed and nourished with social displays of the ‘cost of deviance’ one would rather tow the line, generation after generation. The economics was well aligned with the society. Though it’s anybody’s guess as to what came first – societal rituals or economic necessities.
Take a case in point: marriage. One could argue that marriages are a social institution meant for progeny and sustenance of the tribe. But another lens could be that marriages enable growth of commerce. In the absence of formal institutions of trade and codes of conduct, how does a trader expand (mostly) his franchise beyond the community. Get your son married to the daughter of the nearest tribe. The marriage serves as the ‘collateral’ for the expansion of trade, and the dowry only sweetens the deal. Fast forward to today, and though economics has truly traversed continents, the rituals remain parochial, for they offer the eerie comfort of familiarity. The roles lend to both males and females are so deep rooted in society and not biology that economics can be of only marginal consequence.
I live in an apartment where my immediate neighbours comprise: an unmarried couple bringing about a two year old, a stay-home father and a super-busy executive mom, a single lady donning multitude of girlfriends, a guy who’s just about happy with his bike, and then the underground operatives who are seen only on the WhatsApp group. These aren’t exactly the socially condoned choices from the bygone generation. And yet they attract no economic cost. Our hardware has updated, but our software has refused to budge. Or as sociologists will testify, rituals lag realities.
Getting back to the contours of life. If every single social institution, from marriage to bearing children to taking care of the elderly, are subjugated by economic convenience, why should we not be willing to relook at our work and career? The pandemic was a great demonstration of how otherwise elaborate and inflated religious rituals, right from the birth to the funeral, were reduced to abhorrible enterprises, performed at an arm’s length, in the most clinical manner. (Ever wonder what happened to the souls of all those who were tossed in their PPCs in a 6×6 ft. pit?)
Keeping pace with economic possibilities and social uncertainties, it’s best to learn that there’s nothing sacrosanct about one’s job or a career. Education mustn’t lead to higher studies, studies don’t necessarily terminate into a campus placement, a placement needn’t offer a rewarding career, a career doesn’t have to lead to promotions, and promotions don’t guarantee prestige. So why walk a tightrope which is getting increasingly tattered? Instead, why not chart your own path? Take risks early on in your career, feel no obligation to belong to any club, if you don’t like managing people don’t, and if you want to remain a one-man-show for rest of your life, so be it. As long as you are willing to pay the price of your choices, make them. For not making a timely choice can be ever more precarious.
Getting back to life. Starting birth, the only non-negotiable is death. Everything in between is just your choice, and not an obligation. So don’t feel compelled and work backwards from your obituary to sharpen your focus on what really matters to you. Hope your live well and sign-off elegantly.
These pieces are being published as they have been received – they have not been edited/fact-checked by ThePrint.