By Meghna
One of my best friends is in an “open relationship”—something I question everyday. Being of her generation I understand the integral nature of self-realization and that life is your own journey and nobody else’s. I’ve come to understand her decision more and more each day. But it came as a shock to me when her mom supported and encouraged her to explore herself without questioning her decisions or judging through her own lens, and while I understood my friend, I could not understand her mother.
My cousin holds Hinduism at the core of her heart but has chosen to be with a Christian who is devout and religious. I wonder how that will work out. We are a year apart and share the understanding that love is a force that breaks boundaries. I’ve come to accept this as a universal truth and she is living this reality. After she told her mother, I expected a shattered girl, a broken heart, and a lost soul. Instead, her mother gave my cousin her blessings and wants her to think rationally while giving her the freedom to choose her lifelong friend and husband. My aunt’s acceptance perplexed me—I didn’t understand it.
I have begun to realize that I view parents from a closed lens that is tainted with labels, presumptions and obstacles. I consider myself an open-minded and objective person whose perception of the world is constantly changing and evolving as I experience more, and realize I know less. But it is only now that I have started to wonder where my ideals, opinions and mantras are rooted. I have begun to question why I have specific goals, and the flexibility to adapt them to my surroundings.
With this in mind, in the last year or so I have noticed a paradigm shift in the way I view parents. You forget sometimes that the reason you are open-minded, accepting, persistent and mentally strong is because your parents equipped you with the ability to face the world and persevere. You forget at times—when you expect your parents to shut the door on your dreams and instead they encourage and embrace your choices—that they were the ones who taught you to find your place in the world even if your life did not dance to the same beat as theirs.
I have forgotten that after my parents left India 25 years ago, they evolved together and progressed with the world. I now marvel at what it was that drove them to be the way they are today: tolerant, modern and experimental. Each day I admire my parents more for the choices they have allowed me to make, choices that may stray from the path they would have liked me to take. I also respect them for pushing me to make choices that I myself am afraid of because they are precarious and irrational.
As a girl—I hesitate to say adult—I ponder the expectations and paths a parent wants for a child. I wonder if they believe in a right way of living, and hold on to an ideal—a mould that they hope their child will one day embody. I contemplate this more as my mind swings like a pendulum between wanting and fearing having my own kids one day. Will I have the heart and mind to be strong and encouraging when they confess to me they have broken all my rules of morality? And then I wonder should those rules even exist? A friend once told me, at the ripe age of 21, “We as human beings constantly fool ourselves into believing things are unchanging, forever. If we embraced change at a very basic, fundamental level, not just intellectually; and accepted that things are temporary, we would lower our expectations so much, and be so much happier.”
When you can be so flexible with the expectations you have for yourself, why not let that translate into the expectations you have for your kids? Parents know better than anyone that one of life’s paradoxes is that lowering expectations and understanding the human condition to stretch, develop and risk can actually afford a sense of stability and peace of mind.
As this realization unravels within me, I start to think…
I am hesitant to move to another continent for the sake of a relationship. I am steadfast in my goal to move only for a career, craving independence. My mother urges me to take the plunge—guiding me to feel, for the heart does not falter. And now, with respect and admiration for her wisdom, I am beginning to understand her.
