Is parenting stressing you? Maybe you are mistaking your desire as duty!

Is parenting stressing you? Maybe you are mistaking your desire as duty!

Tendencies reflect in people’s thoughts and actions which are in turn visible as their traits. The most common trait visible in people is that of being desirous and then the strife through their lifetime is committed to fulfilling their desires. Likewise those driven by duty spend their life fulfilling their duties. Fulfilling desires primarily relate to experiencing sensory pleasures. We often see their desire not being limited to their experiences but spills over to how they desire their loved ones to experience life as well. Parents whom we see stressed out, running amok trying to provide the best for their child fall in this category. As they consider it their duty, they do not realise that the anxiety and stress they experience are because of their pursuit of desire.

Humans are an inter-dependent species living as a society. We exchange/ trade services and products. While at times we do it out of love, mostly we do it in exchange for a common currency that we call money. We all work to earn money so that we use that to live – to pay for our needs as well as to enjoy the comforts and pleasures. Society evolved over time and today we live in a society where norms drive our lives.

In the primitive days people pursued their passion and did some work that would earn them the currency to meet their basic needs. With advancements in science, man started inventing more and more conveniences and comforts. As people did not use their money for these privileges because they weren’t a necessity, greedy masters decided to manipulate people into trading their money for these conveniences. For this they used the psychology of aspirational positioning. They positioned these inventions as aspirational lifestyle and used propaganda to associate privilege and pride with this class that possessed these luxuries. They were branded as success and those who did not possess these luxuries were made to feel a loser or a lesser being, which made them feel insecure.

They succeeded in using this tactic to poison the minds of people, which drove them to work so hard to acquire these luxuries, not for their need, but to be perceived as a success by their peers. Architects of the society were very successful in making recognition by peers the ultimate reward for man and man stopped living and man’s purpose of life was defined as upholding his reputation. As we hear this we might feel that the people of those times were dumb, but this is exactly what is happening even today and what everybody goes through.

This backdrop was important to understand the concept of desire that drives the world today. The world is driven by greed. While it is the duty of a man to provide for the family, it is his desire that makes him seek luxuries. Without realising this, man strives just to be perceived a success by the society. His desire for recognition is driven primarily by fear and insecurity and believes that living to the expectations of the society is his duty.

The bars of expectations set so high has become the norm. A student today graduates out of college as a debtor out of fear of being branded a failure. He is manipulated to acquire a certificate that hails his as a success by the society. He is just adhering to the norm. The people controlling the society has managed to enslave everybody to the system and everybody blindly conforms. The architects of the society who are the ultimate beneficiaries of this imposed lifestyle only want conformists to adhere and they follow a systematic approach to eliminate thinkers, divergents and reformists.

The only way to get out of the matrix is to understand the thin line that differentiates duty and desire. A house to live versus a palatial house in a prestigious locality, a vehicle to move versus a branded luxury car, a school for the child versus a prestigious branded school, healthy home food versus branded food joints, clothes to wear versus designer clothing, living a quiet life versus showcasing a fancy life on social media, the distinction is blurred because the desire has come to define life today. The line has to be drawn between living a life versus striving to showcase one’s privileges to his peers to gain validation as a success. The secret mantra that has been making the rich richer!

There has been an orchestrated move to keep the society at a low level of consciousness or realisation. It is done by not allowing people to rise above the barrage of compulsions that bogs them down and drives their lives. People are denied time to think, to seek, to contemplate. By being enslaved to content consumption on TV, radio, social media, video platforms or internet at large, man is constantly conditioned by one propaganda – to adhere to the norms.

Man thus works harder to make more money to buy all the services and products he doesn’t need, driving over-consumption at an insane unsustainable level, bringing destruction, creating wastes that destroy the nature, polluting the water we drink and the air we breath, leaving behind a world inhabitable for the future generations.

It is imperative to understand that every thought, every action we do today is driven by our desire. Children are living a lonely life, parents do not have time to spend with their children, the argument being that they are slogging to give children what they need. The fact remains that the child doesn’t need what the parents think they need. All the child needs is the love, care and attention of the parent. It is the parent who has decided that ‘MY’ child must have the most advanced gadget and the most expensive clothing and has to be sent to the most expensive school. When the child is provided with that, he becomes familiarised with it and it then ends up becoming his need.

Man strives to give his child everything so that he is recognised by his peers as a success. It is the recognition that he is seeking. His desire! Desiring certain experiences for children!

Selfish journey in pursuit of material possessions and pleasures is the parent’s journey and being their children, they become a beneficiary of the experiences the parent provides. It is important to realise that these are imposed on them and not sought by the child. Those were never the child’s desire that the parent has been fulfilling but their own desire for the child. Today we often hear the child complaining at a later stage that he was deprived of all that he craved for and the parent’s reply is that I did everything for you. The standard question asked aloud is “Did I ask you for it?” The earlier we understand this, the better! Understand the needs of the child.