The Obliged

If you go, I will go
If you eat, I will eat
If you play, I will play
If you drink, I will drink
If you dance, I will dance

Do you feel the chain around your neck? No? I do!
This attitude will not create any obligation in a many people, but in me, it does, and I hate obligations. I hate being forced to eat just because another person's eating is linked to mine. I hate to try to be happy, just because another person's happiness is linked to mine and I hate to be cornered to live my life in a certain way such that another dependent person's life is not disturbed.
I decided not have a child, it was not by accident. The choice was out of a painful experience of responsibility to my younger siblings. I knew that a child will eat one up gradually and slowly like cancer, without one knowing. I hear your mumblings. Well, for some people who are able to balance sense of responsibility and obligation with their personal life priorities, I might be wrong, but for a great many eastern women, my theory can be proven applicable.
I skipped the kid but then I missed to skip children in my day to day life. I am talking about the grown up kids that just carry a body outgrown their mental and emotional capacity. I don't know Freud's theory of inner child, and I don't think that is really what I am stuck with. I am referring to people who miss to weight circumstances in a grown up manner consistent with their age and experiences. I am sure you have come across individuals who do not age, who do not learn from experiences, who do not know how to evaluate, respond or react like an adult. Kids, to me, are distinguished with their impulsive responses, uncontrollable emotions, over-sensitivity to trivial matters, unconscious selfishness, lack of foresight or long-term memory and inability to synthesize. These are the same characteristics I see in many child like adults, at least in South-east Asia where it is acceptable to perform and behave like a child as an adult.
Unfortunately, I have a tendency to find them and get them hooked up. There is nothing more disturbing than having a dependent child under the context of a friend around you. Firstly, you are lacking a close friend, because the one assumed to be a friend, ends up to be a burdensome kid. Secondly, these grown p children, are as sweet as their inner child persona, you have formed the emotional attachment before understanding the severity of the situation. Thirdly, if you come to the point that I have come to, feeling entangled and unable to move, the break up is a battle ground, that has no winner, if at all the battle ends ever. Imagine trying to separate a kid from his mother and telling him, she will be gone forever, I don't think it is possible. If you have a technique to do this, I am willing to know.

What does that mean: tame?

It was then that the fox appeared.

"Good morning," said the fox.

"Good morning," the little prince responded politely, although when he turned around he saw nothing.

"I am right here," the voice said, "under the apple tree."

"Who are you?" asked the little prince, and added, "You are very pretty to look at."

"I am a fox," the fox said.

"Come and play with me," proposed the little prince. "I am so unhappy."

"I cannot play with you," the fox said. "I am not tamed."

"Ah! Please excuse me," said the little prince.

But, after some thought, he added:

"What does that mean--'tame'?"

"You do not live here," said the fox. "What is it that you are looking for?"

"I am looking for men," said the little prince. "What does that mean--'tame'?"

"Men," said the fox. "They have guns, and they hunt. It is very disturbing. They also raise chickens. These are their only interests. Are you looking for chickens?"

"No," said the little prince. "I am looking for friends. What does that mean--'tame'?"

"It is an act too often neglected," said the fox. It means to establish ties."

"'To establish ties'?"

"Just that," said the fox. "To me, you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you, I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world . . ."

"I am beginning to understand," said the little prince. "There is a flower . . . I think that she has tamed me . . ."

"It is possible," said the fox. "On the Earth one sees all sorts of things."

"Oh, but this is not on the Earth!" said the little prince.

The fox seemed perplexed, and very curious.

"On another planet?"

"Yes."

"Are there hunters on that planet?"

"No."

"Ah, that is interesting! Are there chickens?"

"No."

"Nothing is perfect," sighed the fox.

But he came back to his idea.

"My life is very monotonous," the fox said. "I hunt chickens; men hunt me. All the chickens are just alike, and all the men are just alike. And, in consequence, I am a little bored. But if you tame me, it will be as if the sun came to shine on my life. I shall know the sound of a step that will be different from all the others. Other steps send me hurrying back underneath the ground. Yours will call me, like music, out of my burrow. And then look: you see the grain-fields down yonder? I do not eat bread. Wheat is of no use to me. The wheat fields have nothing to say to me. And that is sad. But you have hair that is the color of gold. Think how wonderful that will be when you have tamed me! The grain, which is also golden, will bring me back the thought of you. And I shall love to listen to the wind in the wheat . . ."

The fox gazed at the little prince, for a long time.

"Please--tame me!" he said.

"I want to, very much," the little prince replied. "But I have not much time. I have friends to discover, and a great many things to understand."

"One only understands the things that one tames," said the fox. "Men have no more time to understand anything. They buy things all ready made at the shops. But there is no shop anywhere where one can buy friendship, and so men have no friends any more. If you want a friend, tame me . . ."

"What must I do, to tame you?" asked the little prince.

"You must be very patient," replied the fox. "First you will sit down at a little distance from me--like that--in the grass. I shall look at you out of the corner of my eye, and you will say nothing. Words are the source of misunderstandings. But you will sit a little closer to me, every day . . ."

The next day the little prince came back.

"It would have been better to come back at the same hour," said the fox. "If, for example, you come at four o'clock in the afternoon, then at three o'clock I shall begin to be happy. I shall feel happier and happier as the hour advances. At four o'clock, I shall already be worrying and jumping about. I shall show you how happy I am! But if you come at just any time, I shall never know at what hour my heart is to be ready to greet you . . . One must observe the proper rites . . ."

"What is a rite?" asked the little prince.

"Those also are actions too often neglected," said the fox. "They are what make one day different from other days, one hour from other hours. There is a rite, for example, among my hunters. Every Thursday they dance with the village girls. So Thursday is a wonderful day for me! I can take a walk as far as the vineyards. But if the hunters danced at just any time, every day would be like every other day, and I should never have any vacation at all."

So the little prince tamed the fox. And when the hour of his departure drew near--

"Ah," said the fox, "I shall cry."

"It is your own fault," said the little prince. "I never wished you any sort of harm; but you wanted me to tame you . . ."

"Yes, that is so," said the fox.

"But now you are going to cry!" said the little prince.

"Yes, that is so," said the fox.

"Then it has done you no good at all!"

"It has done me good," said the fox, "because of the color of the wheat fields." And then he added:

"Go and look again at the roses. You will understand now that yours is unique in all the world. Then come back to say goodbye to me, and I will make you a present of a secret."

The little prince went away, to look again at the roses.

"You are not at all like my rose," he said. "As yet you are nothing. No one has tamed you, and you have tamed no one. You are like my fox when I first knew him. He was only a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But I have made him my friend, and now he is unique in all the world."

And the roses were very much embarassed.

"You are beautiful, but you are empty," he went on. "One could not die for you. To be sure, an ordinary passerby would think that my rose looked just like you--the rose that belongs to me. But in herself alone she is more important than all the hundreds of you other roses: because it is she that I have watered; because it is she that I have put under the glass globe; because it is she that I have sheltered behind the screen; because it is for her that I have killed the caterpillars (except the two or three that we saved to become butterflies); because it is she that I have listened to, when she grumbled, or boasted, or ever sometimes when she said nothing. Because she is my rose.

And he went back to meet the fox.

"Goodbye," he said.

"Goodbye," said the fox. "And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."

"What is essential is invisible to the eye," the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.

"It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important."

"It is the time I have wasted for my rose--" said the little prince, so that he would be sure to remember.

"Men have forgotten this truth," said the fox. "But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed. You are responsible for your rose . . ."

"I am responsible for my rose," the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.

The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint Exupéry

The right question

Have you faced difficulty of choosing the right person to consult with in face of difficulty? I actually do have this issue most of the time. Considering the complicated world in which we live and the wide range of issues we face in personal and professional life, and realizing that women have better chances of solving an issues if they discuss it with friends and trusted ones, so I am facing the above question most of the time.

Do I share this with him/her? Will it work? And I really am through with try and error to see who works and who fails; so I thought let me solve this puzzle once and for all that who do I want to talk to if I need to … and then as I was thinking of what is it that I want to talk about that this eureka moment happened. I have a variety of concerns to talk about and being a woman I link them all together. Apparently, we have a more associated brain than men.  So I thought if I can segregate and separate topics that I generally would like to talk about then I might be able to find people to share them with.

It is easier said than done, considering the way I link everything together! And I am not the only one by the way, I understand that Sigmund Freud was the first to see linkages in between human behaviour and totally unrelated far events in different era of his life. I am suffering from the same myopia in human psycho analysis. I first link everything together and then link everything to psychology and then get lost in defining the problem and finding the solution. Lost again in here, what I wanted to say …

Oh yes, let’s engineer the problem as a good friend says, let’s separate them to personal and professional. And let’s break it down further, personal category one: romance, category two: friendship, category three: middle age crisis. Professional category one: aggressive bosses, category two: incompetent colleagues, category three: irresponsible subordinates.

Come on, it is not working, assume you call your friend and tell her, buddy, pleas come over for brainstorming chat over category three, personal issues. It doesn’t work like that, in real life you go out there, get comfortable, talk about a variety of things to warmup and then you open up your heart and reveal the wound inside and expect the listener help you in the healing process, be it direct or indirectly advising you how to heal it. Now, if the friend is a good doctor she will ask the right question and find the root-cause else, the symptoms get treated and the actual cause of injury will continue to live.

All I wanted to say at the beginning was that a right question asked at the right time makes a difference between understanding and not understanding friend. If only we could develop habits of asking rather than presuming and suggesting, then we would have all made perfect listeners and healers.

Expectations

Sometimes strangers are blessing, no expectations, and no obligations. I have difficulty understanding friendship in which there are expectations. I cannot even enjoy a simple coffee with someone cause I will first be thinking of the expectations, what I am supposed to do, what am I suppose to say, how am I supposed to behave, how am I supposed to react?
I guess this is another way in which I am Asian, I have been brought up to value and care for other people; at points I simply overdo it and prioritize others over myself.
Imagine this simple scenario that a friend is sitting in front of me over a coffee table. Let’s assume it is a she. She will smile at me and will convey that she is happy being together but I am not, I mean am feeling alright having a company but I am not thrilled, or excited and simply I don't feel that great, I'm just alright. The fact that I cannot reciprocate her feelings, causes a heavy feeling in my heart, a burden that I am cruel and not sympathetic. She might not even expect a smile in return, I don’t know that, but I anyway feel the burden and it hurts, deep down. Similar to a guilt feeling, I start to feel a void and emptiness.
In reality I know that there is conflict inside my brain, the unconscious Asian character wants to be sympathetic and the conscious Personalized character wants to be sincere and genuine without false pretences, sometimes I simply give in and let auto-pilot take over and smile back but then I just hate myself and my inability to take control, other times, I actively stay on top of my feelings and don’t give in, but afterwards I ask myself, am I psychopath or sociopath or something alike?
Either ways, It takes effort to pull myself together and back to neutral feeling. I have stayed away from people for this reason for such a long long time. If only …

Possessive vs Demanding

What is the difference between possessive and demanding? I never thought they could be such different character traits, until I experienced it first-hand myself. There is this man who specifically highlights at his first meeting that he is controlling type; which is he expects full commitment, dedication and devotion. He utters it clearly and proudly, so I know, he is comfortable with it and does not find it a point of weakens. You either go by his rules or you are out of the game. Rules can be pretty strange at times:

Send me a smile every morning

Love me and miss me

Think of me at all times

Remember I am the best thing ever happened to you

Well, in his case, he has the audacity to voice out his demands, however some men will not comfortably admit it, and yet, at the bottom of their heart they demand it. I am sure we have all met guys who expect you to be happy at all times when you are with them. They just can’t understand how you could have unhappy, uneasy or uncomfortable feelings at their presence. After all they are the magic of your life, and it is enough if they just show up in person, you should be delighted by their mere presence. You should be so thrilled that you will forget all other issues in a blink of an eye and unite with them in a moment of salvation. Ok, I am dramatizing the situation, simply because it has hurt me from time to time, however, the demanding character some men show, is pretty disturbing and I have been the victim of such unreasonable demands quite often. The demands can vary in nature and manifestation, they can target one’s way of behaving, talking, even walking and it can extend to the point that they demand you to think in certain way and be a certain person.  The list can go on, perhaps in another post, here, however, I want to discuss my way of differentiating between demanding and possessive behaviour.

There are this kind of men who would like to be entertained with similar kind of privileges and yet understand that human beings are a mixture of emotional conflicts and have the right to go through hardship.They want to make you happy, cheerful, and relaxed and they also understand value of commitment and devotion and from time to time will highlight them to you. Yet, they don’t enforce it by creating a feeling of guilt, but rather let you feel it and align.

Men would like to make you happy and be the knight of your life, this boosts their self-confidence and places them in the comfort zone that they are the hero and will not easily be replaced. All men, experience a hard time dealing with ambiguities and insecurities that women might inflict. However, some men, when they are dealing with uncertainty of difficult situations, will have the patience, and perseverance to handle it. Some men, on the other hand, at the face of anxiety of not being able to handle the uncertain situation, will just throw up into your face. They will feel relaxed afterwards, they have emptied up their inner poisonous stuff and got rid of it, but you are left there to deal with the stinking inner content of their sick mind, which will not fade away even after few rounds of washing.

Imprisoned

Some time back I watched this scary movie, “The Skeleton key”, imdb 6.5, so no need to check it out, but the idea was extremely scary. The devil spirit could swap bodies. What happened was that when the body, he was living in, grew old, he chose the body of a young, good looking, and presentable person and swapped bodies with that person. So there was no corpse, no blood, no trace of evil or the like, just a young person who found himself in an old body and doomed to die with that body, and the devil spirit who happily sailed away with is new body. The victim was imprisoned in that shrunken, withered, incapable body, hopeless of any freedom ever.
I remembered the ending scene of the movie, when the other day, I saw an old man, who was just walking around and talking to himself in a very same manner. It was as if there was a person imprisoned in a body unable to free up, He seemed distant from his body. He looked far away, in search of something unknown to me. He apparently had some mental impairment of a kind, or so I thought, but it struck me that aging actually does not change our cognitive ability, if anything, it will be sharper and more experienced. How does it feel 30-40-50 years down the road, if one day we wake up and look at ourselves in the mirror and do not recognize ourselves?

It is not that improbable, our mind learns to accept the aging body, so if one day we lose that small thread of mind-body association and we are in an old age, incapable and crippled, what would we do. It should be an immense pain of inability to do anything and yet being doomed to continue to live. It is pretty scary though …

Guilt

When was the last time you felt guilty? As for me it was this morning.
-So you are going?
-I am thinking about it.
-Then I better do not get emotionally attached to you.
-Well, going or not going you were not supposed to get emotionally attached, that was the deal.

And then there was this rush of emptiness into my heart. Is this my mistake? Did I cause him to feel in this way? Did I miscommunicate my intentions? Am I to be held responsible for his sad feelings? I don't even know if he is feeling sad, I just presume it and feel bad for having inflicted pain on someone else! I really feel like being a torturer and this makes me feel extremely bad about myself, somewhat miserable and unworthy!
I am very upfront and outspoken in my feelings and perceptions of the moment. I think I leave no room for second messages or untold part of the story for the other person to go and dig out.  But people tend to make their stories and worst story is when someone thinks that we mutually enjoy the moment. If I enjoy time spent with someone then I will try doing it more often, if I am not after someone to meet then it has only one meaning: I am better off without. Men think I am a girl and must be asked out, cause I will not do it myself and women think that I am in need of company and attention but not comfortable asking for it. In either case, these are all implications, based on which people actually make decisions and act upon them. One way or the other I find myself in awkward situations that I do not know what to do about. 
Then there are situations where someone starts to show interest and get emotionally attached, which is freaking scary. The moment someone of either sexes shows extra attention, all my receptive sensors start to scream out loud: watch out, danger zone. I have developed a sense of weariness for excessive attention or caring. I think it comes at a price, no one will pour kind attention at you without expectations of some kind. Some want attention in return, some want exclusiveness, some want sex, some want admiration, some want help, and the list can go on, but for sure, kindness without expectation of return, of any kind, is a fairy tale and I do not believe in it. Time will show how and when the other person will cash out what is being invested today.
One might say, so what! Let expectations grow, a mere expectation does not impose responsibility of fulfilling that expectation, but then some people can’t let their investment go down the drain and will use all methods to cash it our back, even at the expense of imposing guilt on you, and this is the category that I am the most confronted with, out of my sheer bad luck.

The guilt imposed and the consequent void in my heart is so painful that makes me stay away from mankind altogether. Even the idea of it can hurt, and so I am always so clear and upfront that no emotional attachment, please if you may! and yet life does not stop to surprise us.