Job vs Family: The Eternal Confusion

Now that we can choose whether to have a job and a family, to be a part time or full time mother, you would think our lives would be easier. So why does whatever we choose seem to be wrong?

Take me for instance, when my older daughter started going to school, I started working. It was convenient as my husband was abroad and I was staying with my parents. But lots of people did not think so. How could I leave my child with my mother and go for work? Where was the need for me to work anyway? My husband earned enough! Nobody tried to understand that my needs were not financial but emotional. I needed to feel that I have a choice. I needed to know that I was good at other things too, besides being a wife and a mother.

I did very well in my job, but a few years later when I had my second baby, I quit working. My situation was different now. My husband was back, and being a nuclear family, I had no help at home for the baby. I could not somehow think the job, however important it might have been, was in any way more important than looking after my baby. The very same people, who criticized me last time, criticized me again. This time it was, ‘How could you leave such a good job? After all you could employ a maid for the baby! Lots of women do so…’

Maybe women have always been confused. I think even the cave-women felt that animal trapping was a lot more fun than tidying up the cave and storing the food. At the same time I cannot help feeling that Mrs. Cave-woman at least knew where she was meant to be, even if she did not like it. We do not seem to have that kind of comfort.

Whatever the woman of today does, seems to be wrong. Every newspaper, every television programme and nearly everybody with whom she comes into contact, is eager to tell her that she should be doing something different from what she actually does. That she has a right to work, that she has no right to work; that home and family are boring, that they are fascinating; that her children should be with her, that they should not be with her, that they should be with their granny, with a nanny, in a crèche; that she is contributing a lot, that she is not contributing at all, and so on… which does little for her self-confidence or peace of mind.

Women have always been told not just what to do, but also what to think. And they have been told this mostly by women. I do not know why we cannot leave one another alone, respect each other’s feelings, and I do think it a particularly female characteristic that we cannot. I do not think men go around asking each other why their wives have not had another baby yet!

We are not an over-confident lot. Our propensity to guilt makes us hugely sensitive. And it is made much worse by the simple fact of being at home, where your sense of identity and self-confidence are painfully vulnerable. If somebody in your office tells you that they really think you ought to be programming computers instead of editing textbooks, you may feel upset. But if you have made a fair job out of editing books, been paid for doing it, and even been promoted for it a couple of times, you can shinny off the suggestion or even discuss the absurdity of it with your fellow workers. But sitting in the crisis situation of your kitchen on a bad day, the suggestion that you might be wasting your talent hits hard.

However determined you may be that full-time family care is the right occupation for you, you will still be asked constantly, how you can stand it, and when you are going to stop doing it. ‘What on earth do you manage to do all day? Why don’t you get yourself a job? You must be terribly bored’, are the routine questions.

The point is that everyone knows being a full-time mother is the most important job of all; it is also terribly hard and grindingly repetitive. What women feel very strongly is that if they do not work, they do not have any status. That they do not count in the society at all. People are not prepared to introduce you as ‘Sunita’, who is very busy, looking after two children. You do not have a label. Labels are extremely important to women. A label that says just wife and mother is hardly worth the string to tie it on, not because being a wife and a mother is uninteresting in itself, but because the wearer is made to feel it is uninteresting.

What most women would like, in my opinion, specially when their children are young, is the freedom to choose, to be able to get childcare if necessary and, more importantly, to be able to get a part-time employment if needed or desired, without mortgaging soul and conscience. A full-time job involves too much guilt and worries about the children (more so if they are under five) and about the job as well (fear that you have not done it properly because you have had to rush home).

Many husbands still feel very ambivalent about their wives working. They tolerate it rather than encourage it, however welcome the money, and would rather the work went away and the wives came home. “His idea is that if it makes me happy to work, that is fine, as long as I am not too tired to fuss around him and run the house properly as well,” says Jaya, speaking for many. “If I start moaning about the pressures, he says, ‘why don’t you leave? We can mange without the extra money.’” But then there is another side to it. “Men are having a difficult time at the moment,” said Renu, an ultra loyal wife. “They are being usurped by women at work, they do not like it, and then they get home and get grumbled at for not doing their bit. And they do not even have the choice we do.”

This indicates that each sex has its problems, and there is a lot more to be gained from recognizing the fact and helping each other out, rather than standing in the middle ground and complaining about each other and our own selves. If we are able to this, there will be no cause left for any kind of confusion.

Creativity: Its All In The Mind

Creativity is freewheeling, imaginative thinking that leads to fresh insights and revolutionary ideas and even comes up with useful products. It puts old ideas of familiar things together in a different way. A management consultant would define creativity as the ability to generate new options.

What flows from our imagination does not have to be aesthetically pleasing or glamorous - indeed, one can be creatively involved with an activity most people find dull. A creative tax consultant would come up with new ways to approach the tax returns, keeping well within the law and saving his client’s money.

Unlike artistic talent, creativity is a quality anyone can develop. Whenever we let our thoughts wander and muse, ‘What if…?’ we push our mind to travel beyond the accepted and familiar. Such daydreaming is the source of much of the creativity in our lives. When we come up with a better or easier way to do our job, we are being creative.

If our ancestors had not asked, ‘What if…?’ they would not have turned stones into tools and cultivated food crops from wild plants. No growth would have occurred if everybody had done things the way they had been done before. Creative developers led us to the industrial revolution, the computer age, the exploration of space…

Most of us have probably wondered whether or not we can be creative, and many of us may not be sure how to develop and apply whatever imaginative abilities we possess. We must remind ourselves here that the creative person is made, not born.

The most important and probably the only difficult step in becoming creative is to let our mind wander and operate in illogical ways. Of course, all of us have been taught to do just the opposite – to think logically, to concentrate, to keep our mind from drifting away from the subject and to avoid thinking or doing things that don’t make sense.

In the case of advertisements, the ones that you remember would obviously mean that they are successful with the audience, and you will notice that they are bound to be the ones that do not tell you anything logical about the product advertised. For instance, chocolate advertisements do not discuss the taste of the chocolate! It goes to show that when you think typically, you stay on a narrow track, but when you let yourself go wild, you come up with great ideas.

The business world has recognised the value of associate thinking in its adoption of a technique called brainstorming. A group of workers who are familiar with the problem get together and toss off whatever ideas that pop into their heads, no matter how wild or irrational. Absolutely no critical comments or judgments are allowed until the brainstorming session is over.    

But then brainstorming does not necessarily require a group; you can do it on your own by simply listing the ideas that pop into your head, without stopping to think.

You might try another very productive technique. Grapple with the problem for a while and then turn away from it completely and start doing something relaxing, like working in the garden, taking a bath, watching a movie. Almost invariably, the solution would pop up from the subconscious mind during the relaxed period. Believe me it really works!

Another good way to loosen the creative spirit in ourselves is to visualize. Not to think in words, but to think in pictures. Use metaphors comparing one object or event to another and noting the unexpected similarities in dissimilar things. If the thoughts are not visual, they could be sensual – rousing to the ear or to the sense of touch or taste.

Developing aesthetic sense is also required to increase creativity. A creative person notices the leaves of the tree and stars in the sky. One must learn to react to colour, form and texture. One must feel more intensely, trust the heart not the head.

However, none of the techniques would work unless there is a strong base of knowledge of the area in which you’d like to create, be it business, designing or writing.

Creativity doesn’t blossom overnight. Most people spend many years learning the subject and then make their innovations. They are interested in many areas and have a rich fund of general knowledge. They do not care much for the standard answers and tend to follow their own instincts. They are persistent, pursuing a problem from different angles until they solve it.

So creativity requires flexible thinking that most people, although they may not know it, possess to some degree. Creativity can be cultivated, just decide what you want to do, what your project or your problem is. Be positive in your attitude. Learn all you can about your subject, more than you think you’ll need. Think, relax, and review your ideas. Make changes and additions, variations until you come up with your best. Put your ideas to test. There you are! You have found the solution – that is creativity.

Feeling Good

“It is good to be alive”, said someone. Yes it is. But is it enough? Being alive, that is. One has to work towards sustaining this good feeling throughout one’s life.

“Most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be,” said Abraham Lincoln. It is not what happens to us in life that determines our happiness so much as the way we react to what has happened to us. Feeling good is pretty much in our control. To feel good, we need to concentrate on happy reactions. It can be hard work sometimes, quite like maintaining a nice home – you’ve got to hang on to your treasures and throw out the garbage.

Most people remember a compliment for a few minutes, but an insult for years. Who suffers? The person who insulted us happily breezes through life, while we lose sleep over the insult. Inability to forgive, a tendency to blame others and feelings of guilt are a greater cause of sickness than any infection, because a sour mind creates a sour body.

  

We can learn so much from the children. The most beautiful thing about them is that they absorb themselves totally in the present moment. They do not waste time thinking about the past or the future and know more about having a good time than us. As we mature, we learn to think and worry about past problems and future concerns. Children are eternally fascinated. A rock or a beetle is a source of wonder and excitement to them. The adults may not know much about these things either, but they do not even try to see the magic around them.

  

In his best selling book, Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill wrote:‘‘… our brains become magnetized with the dominating thoughts which we hold in our minds, and by means with which no man is familiar, these magnets attract to us the forces, the people, the circumstances of life which harmonize with the nature of our dominating thoughts.”

   

As the things that we love most and fear most tend to occupy our thoughts much of the time, so we tend to attract those very things. Focus must be on what we want and not on what we fear. Saying that, “If you study hard enough, you may come in the top five of your class,” is immensely better than saying, “if you don’t study hard enough, you might just fail.”

      

There is an inner core in all of us, which is simply beautiful. However, we rarely focus on our inner strengths. If we did, we would not treat ourselves badly or allow others to treat us so. Have you ever noticed that when you are feeling good about yourself, other people seem very nice! The world is a reflection of ourselves. When we hate ourselves, we hate everybody else. When we love being who we are, the rest of the world seems wonderful!

   

In order to feel good, we must first develop a good self-image and recognize our own worth. It is worth remembering that time is an abstract concept, the present is all that we have, so we must enjoy whatever we are doing for its own sake and not for the end result.

Religion And Spirituality

I thought I was one of the very few in my age group to be interested in religion and spirituality. I attributed it to my upbringing. Then came a surprise element in the form of a very glamorous wife of a friend – she called up specially to appreciate one of my articles, saying that she was in regular touch with many astrologers and gurus, etc. Then walked in a young designer, who talked in terms of soul, destiny and of course questioned me about my meditational habits! In our circle of friends I find doctors talking of pranic healing. Our quarterly trips have become discussion forums on the supreme power, the vedic way of life, mythology and yoga. In kitty parties and dinners, people are talking about topics once reserved for satsangs. In fact, if you haven’t tried meditation yet – you’re in the minority. Religion and spirituality have gone mainstream.

As we practise yoga, take up tai chi, and energise our chakras, we still are not satisfied. The big spiritual questions -- the ‘why’ questions -- have not gone away. Why do bad things happen to good people? Why does God take away a loved one so young? What is the meaning of our existence? These questions haunt us. When we go through a crisis, an illness or the death of a close one, these questions loom larger and the need to answer them is felt stronger. For this -- and more -- people are returning to religion and spirituality. Sometimes when people put the religion down, it's the dogma that they rebel against. But at their core, the religious traditions are where our impulses, our need for something bigger, have been satisfied.

Religion and spirituality have been the most common coping mechanisms for many, as science and medicine fail to live up to their expectations. People are now seeing the limits of medical care. People do get sick, they do die, and sometimes there is nothing medicine can do about it. When you feel you’re fighting these battles alone, that’s when you feel great stress. But if you are part of a faith or tradition, you feel that you’re not alone. You begin to feel that God will use this crisis to create some good -- that you can turn this crisis into something good.

There was a young boy who got HIV from a blood transfusion and died of AIDS. His parents kept asking, ‘How could God allow this?’ There was no answer. Ultimately they found their own way to cope by making a commitment to helping children who were ill. There are many such stories around us. Doing good to others is the root of religion and spirituality.

The Mind Body Connection

We are all acquainted with the heart pounding, teeth gnashing fight or flight reaction to life’s real or imaginary terrors. The adrenaline rush that readied our pre-historic ancestors for battle when they were physically threatened can also be called into play by any major or minor jet-age hassle – a confrontation with the mother-in-law at home or with the boss in the office, bereavement in the family, divorce, etc. The wear and tear these stress reactions have on the body can lead to ulcers and high blood pressure or bring on attacks of asthma or irritable bowel syndrome.

Research shows that these natural reactions can also depress the immune system (the disease fighting system of our body) making us susceptible to all sorts of infections. “Our grandmothers knew all along that our minds and our bodies were connected, even if the scientific community didn’t. We’ve simply provided irrefutable data showing that it’s true,” says David Felten, neurobiologist, University of Rochester. That is why stress related ailments typically occur after, not during, the worst of the stressful situations. Colds, bad back, skin problems, headaches, etc. are surprisingly also stress related! Mental attitude, emotional states, even personality traits can have striking impacts on physical health.

Doctors have always known that the mind has a powerful influence on the body. Just about every one of them has a favourite story of a sick patient who gets well against all medical odds. One of the strangest ones on the record is the case of Mr. X who was terminally ill with cancer. On hearing about a new drug, Krebiozen, Mr. X begged his doctor to try it on him. It was an expensive drug and very difficult to obtain, the doctor resisted at first but finally decided that a single-injection could do his dying patient no harm.  Mr. X responded dramatically. Within two days, he was up, dressed and strolling in the hospital corridors chatting with his fellow patients. What’s more, the tumours that had riddled his body miraculously shrunk. Ten days later he went home, to all appearances completely cured. A few months later, as reports of the ineffectiveness of Krebiozen started coming in the newspapers, Mr. X checked back into the hospital on the brink of death. This time his doctor offered him a new improved form of Krebiozen but actually administered a harmless solution. The cancer symptoms again vanished, and Mr. X went home. Eventually, the final medical verdict on the Krebiozen hit the headlines. It was declared completely worthless against cancer. Mr. X returned to the hospital and died there. “His faith was gone, his last hope vanished,” his doctor concluded in his report.

Drs. Kaneko and Takaishi of the Osaka University Medical School use hypnosis in connection with psychotherapy to treat a wide variety of skin problems, from acne, oral herpes (cold sores) to rashes and warts. This is possible because close links with the nervous system makes the skin highly sensitive to emotions. You must have noticed young brides-to-be getting acne just a day before wedding. I always used to break into a rash before any exam. Resistance to hypnosis and other methods of mind cure runs high, but nonetheless a subtle shift in attitudes has taken place among both the doctors and the patients, who are now willing at least to accommodate psychological factors in treating serious diseases.

Meditation and yoga have been used for a number of years to cure chronic problems. The idea behind these relaxation techniques is the control of the emotional reaction to stress. The stress-related ailments may be precipitated by sudden traumatic experiences or may be the result of a gradual build up of tension due to everyday problems and difficulties, determined largely by the person’s attitudes and personality make up.

So while taking care of our physical fitness, it would be worth our while to evaluate and modify (if need be) our attitudes. We must avoid becoming a perfectionist and avoid imposing on ourselves expectations to get greater amounts of work done in a given time. It is important to realize that greater spontaneity, productivity and effectiveness come with less anxiety and tension.

The Need For Privacy

Privacy, both in emotional and physical sense, is something every individual needs – to restore energy for dealing with the outside world, to dream, to conduct small personal rituals beyond the reach of prying or known eyes.

Although there may be differences in people’s need to be alone, the attitudes are strongly influenced by the changing demands of the outside world. Priya a 32-year-old schoolteacher says she was never concerned about privacy until she had a baby last year. Now she feels the need to plan ahead for special private time, as bearing the triple responsibility of being a wife, mother and teacher leaves her virtually no time for herself. This seems to be the most common complaint of working mothers.

Although the right to be by ourselves is an important element of personal privacy, yet it is a mistake to equate privacy with the simple fact of being alone. The condition – whether in relation to friends or family members – is much a state of mind as a physical state of being. In many ways, privacy is the positive counterpart of the unhappy experience of loneliness. Whether we perceive aloofness as enjoyable privacy or as painful loneliness depends mainly on whether we have chosen to be by ourselves or whether the solitude has been forced upon us.

Social loneliness is the absence of friends and group activities. Intimate loneliness is the absence of a permanent mate. Friends cannot substitute for an intimate companion and a mate cannot make up for the absence of friends. People who live alone suffer from both intimate loneliness and insufficient privacy as they engage in a number of activities in an effort to find, and to compensate for the absence of a spouse. Couples on the other hand, may not suffer from intimate loneliness but can suffer from insufficient privacy. Unless the man and the woman have identical needs for solitude, some negotiation is usually required in a relationship; especially when initial romantic passion diminishes and the partners begin to re-assert their separate identities.

 

The freedom to take care of intimate physical needs alone is also a basic aspect of privacy; in fact a major source of argument for mates/roommates, even husbands and wives. Tasks like shaving, putting on make up etc. also serve the purpose of providing personal time and space to think or plan. But then getting this kind of privacy is not difficult to manage.  Emotional privacy is more complicated than physical, since it concerns the door to our hearts and mind rather than our bedrooms and bathrooms.

In an intimate relationship, conflicts over emotional privacy can arise even when either partner is extremely secretive or extremely open. Just as one sees many different attitudes towards physical privacy, there can be many different styles of emotional expressions.

Piyush and Vishakha who married in their late 30’s are a perfect example of a husband and wife having different definitions of emotional privacy. Vishakha is not a secretive person, but her way of getting over a problem is to think about it a great deal privately before she looks for anyone else’s opinion. Piyush, in contrast is apt to discuss a dozen alternatives with his friends and his wife before he seriously considers a particular solution. “I was unhappy at work and thought seriously of finding a new job for several months before I brought it up with Piyush,” Vishakha says. “By the time I asked him what he thought, I already had other possibilities in mind though I never would have made a final decision without consulting him. But he was very upset that I had been worrying about it and had not talked to him right away.”

Piyush on the other hand, would upset Vishakha by venting his feelings even when they did not reflect any serious dissatisfaction with his life but only expressed a passing moment. Couples like these have to work hard to find a middle ground between them. The inability to work out a mode of shared privacy is a source of stress for many couples, because they may begin to feel that they can only recharge their energies outside a relationship. The desire for privacy, on either a conscious or an unconscious level is one important reason for marital infidelity and even divorce.

Being alone together or shared privacy is a concept that is essential to any relationship. This quality in friends or couples enables them to share the same physical space without intruding on each other’s privacy. According to me, it is the highest expression of compatibility between two people or a man and a woman and the key to a long and successful married life or friendship.

But how to snatch moments of personal privacy from amidst the vast sea of routine?  Use early morning or late night hours for any private activity that clears your head and recharges your energy. These are ideal times for exercise, meditation or simple thinking about the day that is beginning or ending. If you have children, entrust the help of anyone you trust – mother, mother-in-law, sister or sister-in-law or even your best friend – to free you for occasional evenings or weekends by yourself. It takes thorough planning with understanding and involvement of those one loves the most, to satisfy one’s need for privacy.

The Child Within Us

“In every real man a child is hidden that wants to play,” said Friedrich Nietzsche, a bright eyed, four year old adventurer, aching for some attention and love. The question is not if we harbour a child-like side within us but whether we have learned to live with it in the best possible way or not. Perhaps, because we have been so determined to prove our independence, to be out there – working and travelling on our own, we have ignored the child within us. Perhaps, all too aware of our childish ways, we have tried to bury that side – because it seemed to be the adult thing to do. Or maybe we are just repeating the past, still treating the child in us the way we were treated – with impatience and anger.

Someone else gets the job that we wanted; we do not get invited to the party that we were looking forward to; we feel rejected and it hurts. Right then, when things are not going on too well, we need to stop and talk to the hurt child within us. If we do not, that child is going to feel abandoned and make him/herself heard – by going on an eating or spending binge, throw a tantrum, get noticed – and life will get from bad to worse. The inner child can also make him/herself heard in ways that affect our relationships with people important to us. S/he can quit a job in a rage, walk out of a marriage because of a few rough months, and wreck a twenty-year-old friendship.

Many times the reason is, that the child in us needs the kind of total acceptance and attention that we needed as babies – even though our behaviour may be totally unreasonable. Whatever the reason, the inner child now needs to hear and feel that we understand his/her past feelings. By recognizing this, some of the anger and pain will seep out and the sense of deprivation will begin to cease. For many of us, it may be a study in the art of parenting, even if we are not parents ourselves.

Try talking to yourself and you will learn that you can take good care of your inner child yourself. There is nothing wrong with grieving and weeping. For once, ignore the very ‘adult’ behaviour. If you are having trouble talking to yourself, a stuffed toy, or a pillow will work wonders! It is an exercise worth doing. It gives us the opportunity, at any age, to move on, to start again when we want, to step out from the fog of anger and gloom, and begin to take pleasure in the energy, humour and spontaneity we so hastily buried as we rushed to put childhood behind us. As G.K. Chesterton put it very aptly, “Happy is he who still loves something he loved in the nursery.  He has not been broken in two by time; he is not two men, but one, and he has saved not only his soul but his life.”