“To be, or not to be– that is the question.” Shakespeare
The world we exist in relies heavily on relationships to make us who we are. Hence the identity of “who I am” is the sum of the characters of our life. Shakespeare said, “All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players.”
A misunderstanding starts when a brand new concept of being is introduced into someone’s world. Suddenly, they are challenged to become a new being to fit into a new status quo of what is “acceptable”. Some people embrace change, others, resist change.
My uncle resisted me studying overseas when he said, “don’t bring back your western ideas.” He has good intentions, but he believes that I should be a housewife as a full time career option. Although I had highlighted to him that it is not possible for modern day women to pursue that, he still firmly believes a woman’s place of happiness is at home and men should be providers.
I do look up to him as a Big Uncle and over the years, over many insistence to him that the lifestyle of staying at home to look after the family and not have a job for my generation of women due to the way society is structured is not an option. After much insistence on my part, he finally agreed that women can do both – work in a career and have a family life.
Hence by overcoming that conversation with my uncle over a period of a few years and few encounters, he now accepts that I am a business woman who also is able to have a family life. This has fundamentally shifted his way of looking at modern day women as probably, his previous conversations with my cousins and aunts had not worked either as he had aspired for us to be happy housewives with a great (interior) family life but all of us ended up working and having ambitious (exterior) goals in life. Now that I had shifted that we can do both (interior) family goals and (exterior) work goals, he now accepts that women do both.
Sometimes all it takes is a continuous stand before the relationship shifts from “unaccepted” to becoming “accepted”. An introduction of a new idea or concept causes an evolution of the mind itself to re-define and re-accept the new state of the way things are. The shift is not about “changing” but it is about “evolving”. Hence resistance sets in when there is an evolution happening.
Consider that your immediate relationships is the key to causing your own evolution and the moment that one stops to listen to other characters on stage, the play stops. There is no ACT 2. Life stops at ACT 1 and stagnates slowly till we die. The moment we start listening to others, life moves on to ACT 2, and it becomes a new state of who we are. Now, my uncle is proud of my business achievements and family achievements and shares with other members of the family they should aspire to have both. He has moved to ACT 2 of life and is now is receptive to my “western” ideas as well and that maybe me going overseas to study has allowed me to converse well with him in a way that he has reconciled that old and new world.
My uncle is indeed a Big Uncle.
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AVERRAL writes under pen name Scarlet Risqué. She stars in Scarlet Queen YouTube with over a million views. She holds a degree in business. The RED HOURGLASS is ranked Top 50 Espionage Thriller on Amazon. She is currently writing the sequels to the Hourglass Series. Grab a free copy of her novel now RED HOURGLASS on Amazon |
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