Parents and Children

I know all of what you do are meant truly for our well-being, that the intentions are absolutely noble and you only have our best interest at heart. The problem is what constitutes as a virtue to you or rather a vice to you might not be one when you look at it from my perspective. If you let your apprehensions and prejudices and inhibitions and more importantly your value system dictate what I should do or should not, then you are fundamentally destroying everything you have tried to inculcate in me.

YOU have taught me to be independent, to use my ability to think and weigh and choose accordingly what is right or beneficial for me. YOU have given what you had to give and if I, today, are at loggerheads with your value system or your conventions and I desire to chart out a path that I think suits my disposition, then YOU need to stop for a second and allow yourself to trust me against your wishes. Before you jump out of your skin and use the typical parental rhetoric of me being insensitive and how things used to be in your time.

Because if you do that, then I need to remind you in all humility that your time has passed. Just as mine will maybe 20 years from now on. Just as my children's will be when they are 50.

Your children are NOT expected to abide by your system of morality. Because times change and through that changes many things. One of them, particularly in the context of our country is that, the glorification of sacrifice as an instrument of expression of undying love and intensity has given way to being selfish in pursuit of happiness. If it could be had today, it should and will be had today. The second would be a just and necessary utter disdain for what will become of society if we are to be hedonistic. While I appreciate our eternal commitment to hypocrisy in every sphere of life, when we criticize others inspite of having lovely skeletons in our own cupboards, this concern about society forgetting who constitutes them is perplexing. Why not for a change think of our own happiness and fix ourselves first before taking such an honourable job of fixing the society?

Now, why do I still rant about YOU and not just screw it and go ahead? Because I want you to be part of the time when the world appears to be a beautiful place to live in. And hence, I yield. Every time. Hoping that someday you will look at it from my end and try to out-think yourself and allow me to be me. You are important irrespective of whether you can take a call on my life - you are the one who has given it to me.

We are not at war. We shall never be. And if you intend to remain rooted to your conservatism and your ideas, then as a worthy son, I have to do what you have always taught me to - stand up for what I believe in even when I see you warming the opposition bench, for I cannot allow you to let me let go off something which I know for sure is right and let you realize that in hindsight, when we have lost the most precious resource called time.