Cyclic life
I asked a friend, why are you so anxious to get married? Where does the pressure come from?
The answer is not as bizarre as I had thought it would be, coming from someone like that friend of mine. Parents edging, society’s expectations and stigma. The normal wohoos of todays world I guess.
What got me thinking is how absolutely cyclic things really are, and yet some of us would feel like we’re the only ones who’s been through it, and goes “oh woe is me”.
Ok, let me guide you through my train of thoughts.
You know how now that you’re working, you’d tend to gaze fondly back at your student life days? And then you go on telling your juniors to appreciate and enjoy the carefree days that they have now. They never listen do they. They’d go through the same cycle, worrying about studies and the petty stuff, and when they grow older and get jobs, or have bigger responsibilities, they’d get into the holier than thou shoes and start preaching to their juniors about greener pastures in a students life.
That’s cyclic for you. That was the first carriage of the train of thoughts.
The second carriage is this: The marriage question. I don’t know how rampant this is in other cultures and ethnic groups, but amongst the Malays (or maybe I should say Malaysians….because I have experienced the questions by non Malays as well), “Bila nak makan nasi minyak?” is almost like the rite of passage for all girls and women ripe of age. And the questions goes on and on, at every dinner place, lunch date, family gathering, street party , OTHER people’s weddings and so on and so forth, until the person finally gets married. What I don’t understand is why people continue to ask, without fail, every. single. time. Not that I care much.
But this is classic example of cyclic, because it happened then (our parent’s days) and it is happening now. I don’t see why it doesn’t continue to happen in the future.
What aptly follows, after the person gets married is “When will we be hearing the pitter patter of little feet?”. Ah, the skill of being subtle. Then when you do get your first child, they go on saying, “Bila angah nya nak datang pulak”. You know, if I had a ringgit for every sarcastic answer for these questions, I’d probably be a billionaire (maybe).
The third carriage is: When we realise that all these are very much cyclic, and we get the fact that Malaysians are people with nosy-ness making up for the lack of hidung mancung, why do we need to be depressed, or angry, or plain annoyed at such situations? Is it so bad to not conform to society’s take on what is the norm (of course, I don’t encourage anyone to go against the law [natural or otherwise]) and just be happy. I wonder if we were to delve into our parents thoughts back then, we’d probably encounter the same sentiments. They just didn’t let the whole world know of course.
