World as I Think

I was traveling on my way back to home on a cold Sunday night, which seems to be the new apparel of Chennai. I could smell global warning which has permeated us gradually but with a conscious undertaking. No wonder Thomas Friedman claimed, "The world is flat", I can see signs of "thanksgiving" in its own way by nature.

I was a pillion, as an equally lean friend of mine rode the bike on the roads of new Chennai, no cents for guessing, it was the Keelkatalai-Velachery road. I could sense the new epicenter of middleclass burgeoning out there, after they managed to topple bids of real estate prices with an irrational upward bias.

We had this aged, unsolved argument between us, how should one tradeoff one's freedom with the obligations which engulf him, leave alone whether we should tradeoff. I could recollect another conversation where one of friend told me that he would want to get settled in life by forty and then live the rest of his life following his passion. I don’t know what sense it makes to salvage one passion for the socially constructed obligations which can only give only leave dissonance and frustration till forty. Everybody wants to "achieve" success in his or her career to acquire a respectable economic & social status.

Continuing our bike journey, I quipped as to whether he would be free to follow his passion once he had achieved the "economic status" & family obligations. He was as confused with his predictions about such a state, as my were intensions to ask them. I defended as to how success in career along with choosing the career itself, the economic status and balancing out once freedom is a social construct. Most of us merely follow the norms of the society only to safeguard our acceptability, which is an outcome when we subscribe to them. May be I can even extend my argument that accepting conformability is social construct itself.

I really picked up this great line from a blog " hallucination is the best medicine”. I had my own deliberation. There are three states, we understand the social construct and follow our freedom although it could be following the social construct. Then there is this other state, we are "blessed" with ignorance about the construct in our lifetime, which leaves no dissonance but a latent obsession to accept fate.

The other state is that we really don’t know whether there is a construct but it keeps peeping in then and there, we decide to submit to the construct, to leave our freedom to take refuge in submissiveness. The outcome is quite evident we are face dissonance and we reflect the society rather than our freedom when we unconsciously want to liberate ourselves.