Are men very different from women? And who is weaker? Some believe we are so different we could have come from different planets. 'Men are from Mars, women from Venus?' the famous book calls it. Really??
No....
We are the citizens of The Earth - all very much alike!
It only happens that divisions are created the day we are born.....
....No wonder by the time we are adults we end up feeling like we come from entirely different planets!
We are one species, called THE HUMAN. Same at our core, however, we vary in shapes and sizes.
Larger size gives us greater physical strength, meaning we are better equipped for greater physical demands. The rest of us are physically weaker. What about emotional weakness though? What about the correlation between an emotional weakness and a physical strength? Is there any?
How does emotionally weak person look like, and is he/she actually WEAK?? Our Ego, our mind, likes to make differences, and create divisions, to make us feel somewhat useful for different purposes in terms of survival.
Yet the single purpose we are here is common to us all: to transcend our differences, transcend our Ego, and embrace our diversity. To connect and understant how we relate to each other. To BE ONE.
Yet right the opposite is happening, which is preventing us to fullill this purpose.
We create divisions from an early age. Right from the start we are saying: you are different, separate, hence not part of the larger WHOLE. We were forced into being this or that since being few months old: 'you play with the doll', 'you can't play with the doll - you must play with a car', 'you choose blue colour because pink really isn't appropriate for you.'
How do we know that our boy will like cars in 15 years time? How do we know that our daughter won't become F1 driver at the age of 18? We don't.... we assume!
And how could we know!?
We cannot notice she could be a gifted driver when we ask her to play with a doll and sit still at the age of 4, when we force her to clean the house and serve meal at the age of 12, instead of letting her express what she prefers to do. We commit crime on our children by forcing OUR ideology onto them, by forcing our assumptions.. We force onto them our idea of normality.
We force them to become what we became.
We don't give them the opportunity to find out who they are for themselves without butting in! We tell them who they should be and what is required to be accepted, loved. We tell them what is appropriate, because the same crime was committed on us.
It is a well researched phenomenon that the ABUSED continues with abuse to ease his/her pain, and in an attempt to understand what has happened to him/her. We tell our children to "suck it up". We punish them for being emotional. Why?
Because the epitome of strength is to deny yourself your emotions? Because admitting how we feel makes us somehow weak? Because we become 'weaker' if we fail to use the tool God has given us which makes us human?
Is feeling and expression of emotions making us weak physically somehow?? Or have we inherited this correlation from our warrior ancestors, and not bothered with questioning this in line with our evolution?
Why aren't our boys allowed to cry? Why are our girls forced to serve others?
We create a problem. Big problem! We force our children to drop their valuable tool. We deny them understanding and management of THEIR OWN feelings.
....No wonder there are many angry men who want to prove their 'strength' by being physically violent! No wonder women are, deep down, full of resentment towards the men they have to serve to. We create the precise condition which we like our children to avoid. We create a CONFLICT. Because we DIVIDE right from the start.
We divide our children from others. And not only that. We distance them from themselves.
We deny them their natural state by forcing them into becoming someone else.
Children are pretty happy with things as they are, they are happy to be themselves. This is why children are full of life! They don't wish to change....
It must be us.... WE must change how we see weakness. We must realise that being weak is having less tools of understanding ourselves, and others. We must realise that emotional denial means being emotionally UN-INTELLINGENT. Emotional intelligence is an important skill in a repertoire of our species.
We must realise that mastering emotional regulation is not the same as emotional denial. Being EMOTIONALLY AWARE is a great strength. Strength, because it makes us more of who we should be, NOT by a definition of our Ego mind, but by the definition of our TRUE NATURE - our Heart.
Thank you for reading. If my article contributed to understanding yourself, please be generous and share it with others.
Copyright © 2016 Michaela Patel