Morning Musings

Image Source: Animo Apps

As it is, We humans have come a long way from being cave men to the digital media men. We started 3.5 million years ago not much different from the chimpanzees and monkeys called as Homo Habilis at the time and reached the modern species of Homo Sapiens Sapiens which evidently rules the earth. As we progressed in the matters of mind and technology, we scored comfort and luxury in every waking aspect of life. We became rulers and technology became the slave at our disposal. There isn’t an iota of doubt that we have progressed immensely; we have gained immensely, but for all we have gained, have we lost something? I know that the answer to this question can nothing be short of a multi pronged divergent analysis and each prong would again lead to multifarious aspects never really converging at one point. But my intention of writing this article here is not really to go to into all that detailed analysis. It is rather to share a very simple thought that occurred to me after I was just done with my morning yoga practice. With my breath calmed and soothed, I was staring into the surrounding woods before getting up from the mat to start the day. It is when this feeling of having lost the sense of awe crept into my mind. For all we have gained, have we lost some? Pardon me if your feeling doesn’t resonate with mine but this is what I felt in that moment of morning silence. Looking at the swaying leaves, my imagination transported me into a world when evolution was still at the earliest stages. I wondered about the joy and veneration it must have brought upon man to feel the breeze on a hot sunny day. How he must have rejoiced to see the gentle sway of leaves and petals. How grateful he would have felt to discover a tiny brook and how he would have saved it from getting dirty for the primitive man however resourceful was short of readymade resources. When he discovered fire, wouldn’t his reaction had been of awe, veneration and fear combined.  That is probably why ancient men practiced animism. Today we our educated minds dispel animism as superstition but wasn’t this superstition a sign of sensitivity, watchfulness and intuitiveness. The respect and veneration to the objects of nature must have been inspired out of a sense of awe and wonder man must have felt having discovered the bounties of nature for the first time. Today everything seems so obvious that we have lost our ability to be awed at things. We have lost our finer sensitivities to the surprises and wonders of nature. Who cares about gratefulness to the trees when fans and ACs have become integral? We, Homo Sapiens Sapiens, have become the species for whom everything material or living has just become a thing of use. We are an entitled species who use and abuse every resource of nature without caring in the slightest while destructing the very nature that our selfish gene feels entitled to. Things are just things for us; no sense of awe or wonder attached, no veneration to the nature on whose loving arms are we thriving. We have lost our finer sensitivities to boredom, monotony and mundane. We as a species have become so utterly selfish that we would terminate species after species just to make space for our own proliferation. Let alone nature or other species, we as a species do not spare the kin of our own. Has all the progress led us to being more cold and thankless? Have we been losing our capability to feel awe and veneration to the nature that serves us?

I am going to end this article with a question mark and let all of you readers come up with your own answers for yourself. As for me, I can’t deny having lost some of it or may be most of it. For those of you who’re thinking, what purpose does it even serve to be all talk and no action and I won’t disagree with you. This article doesn’t make me any better than the selfish gene that’s proliferating at a fast pace. It is just what I felt like writing and did nonetheless.  

*Fading Red of the Bridal Dress*

Image source: DHgate.com

So here is what I am wondering about these days: What is it about turning thirty that completely freaks out a single woman [Well majority of them atleast]? However, before jumping into a sea of hazy contemplation [or read as a disgruntled rant], I need to give a brief detail about myself. So; I am a twenty nine year old woman on the verge of being thirty [Or well! may be just a woman who has been ageing for 29 years but whose body stopped the process of growing in size at what? Seventeen may be! (fortunately or unfortunately)]. My facial skin, though, was not as lazy as my stunted body [And hey! Please do not judge me too hard. My tiny frame did manage to stretch up to four feet and dragged itself up to eleven more inches]. Coming back to my facial skin; it has been through that dark phase when zits were stubborn to sit all over my cheeks leaving no space for my skin to breathe. One fine day, clouds started to lift and the dark phase was over. But the scars remained. All in all, I am not a hot looking chick, but I just get by. May be you’ve already started wondering if I have got some brains as well  inside my stunted body; then well, let me tell you I have got a teeny-weeny bit which enables me to earn a decent living on my own and be financially independent. So again, I am not an intellectual catch, but I just get by. The crux of the whole story is that I am an average woman; average looks [Though my height and frame is less than average and haven’t I been judged for that? Hell Yeah!], average intelligence, average nature, average charisma, average earning and add some more averages from your side in this list of averages. I live in a very small town which does not show up in the auto drop down list in most of the online form filling sites. Ahem! I suppose in my attempt to give brief details about myself, I have derailed a little too much. So let me get back to the subject of my contemplation mentioned in the very beginning. Why turning thirty and being single is such a huge deal? Is it just a society thing and the peer pressure of getting married at the right age and right time?

Is getting married at the right time more important than getting married to the right man? Or are we [Read the clan of single women touching thirty] actually deluded in our concept of what we call as the ‘right man’? What is it about ‘thirty’ that puts us all on our toes and a long ongoing search of the ‘right man’, the ‘true love of our lives’ almost comes to a sudden halt as if we are being jolted out of our senses by the emergency brake hit right on time by the super dictator analytical brain to save us the damage of being forlorn and alone? Were we deluded before or do we get deluded just near that milestone of thirty? It is like until reaching thirty we had been in an expedition to find a lake of soul mate love, a natural one, just out there waiting for us to take a dip; on hitting thirty, however, we start opening up to the new option of rather creating an artificial one. There is a gradual acceptance to building dams to harness love against the walls of resistance to loneliness and insecurity.   

   

Why is it that a single woman at twenty nine years, eleven months and thirty days is still an alright kind of marriage material and yet things change in a single day? Is there an invisible expiry date imprinted on us that renders us not as good for nuptial ties [or is it nuptial consummation] after we hit thirty? And if this is not the case, why is there so much pressure about marrying by the age of thirty? There is pressure of family, relatives, society and all sorts but the real pressure is when we start feeling it too.  This is just how our mental conditioning is. We want to be with Mr. right and at the same time we don’t want to risk being alone waiting for Mr. right when [for god sake] that Mr. right has not shown up in thirty long years. Even though social pressure is there, the fact is we become insecure as well. There is insecurity of being left out alone in the world while all your friends are busy having pompous weddings, elaborate pre-wedding and post-wedding photo shoots, crowding their facebook and insta walls with wonderful honeymoon destinations, procreating and kicking out babies. Also, there is insecurity of decent men already having been taken or being taken as we are waiting for some in comprehendible definition of ‘right man’ to fructify into an actual physical creation. Surely, this insecurity then becomes a contributing factor in our decision to take a blind plunge into the sea of matrimony hoping to keep afloat on the live jacket of adjustment and compromise. They say life is a gamble. Perhaps the adage would be truer in context of arranged marriages.

Why is marriage so important to validate our existence? Why can’t we live peacefully without getting fanatic about this marriage stuff? Why is there so much hysteria surrounding this one subject? It is strange that a single woman’s achievements seem all pale to the society in comparison to a married one [ true for the average achievers at least if not the ones on top notch] We can be average and still choose to be single; or can’t we [ without inviting some derogatory or demeaning glances sending our fragile average self esteem down the drain]? If an average woman is approaching thirty, the gates of matrimony start shrinking to accommodate her less and lesser each day despite her willingness to go past someday. Yet she’s not spared the verbatims people have been using since ages to enquire about single womens’ future wedding plans and even though she’s mortified at such queries, the average single woman doesn’t mutter a word about her dashed hopes. She keeps fighting a vicious circle of hope and hopelessness in the battlefield of her mind. An average single woman approaching thirty is no less than a warrior.

A single woman turning thirty is not a shiny glossy building but it is definitely the kind of building which has survived many storms and bad seasons. She is strong willed and special despite all the averages she has got in her person. There are multitude of factors which might have led her to be still single but there is no reason she should be out casted as a specter just because she does not have that one tag of married on her advantage. She becomes upset and depressed sometimes; but she knows how to pick herself up. She knows that the red color of her much awaited bridal dress is leaking out of the corners of her mind, becoming faint each day, but she knows one day will be her day and she is strong enough to wait for that day.

To all the women who are single and approaching thirty, cheers and a thumbs up!