Angst

On my way to Lahore this week, I noticed the light green leaves of the sisham trees turning red as autumn . Red seemed to be all around, a deep, burgundy red. Clothes, flowers, nailpaint, even the curtains of my bedroom. But I noticed as i entered my room that the dark mauve velvet chaise longue gives a lovely contrast to the red and off white colour scheme. It got there by chance, but today I see it as if for the first time. Caught up with the more striking red, I seldom noticed the mauve, but it was always there, a colour that I always loved, but never gave much thought. Today it makes me smile. It is not the colour of life,action and passion like red, but it is the colour of creativity and spirituality. Both are necessary for me. A life without spirituality and creativity, however passionate and driven, is only half lived. Creativity is the gift of God himself, but without drive,comes to nothing. One of my favourite stories about God's relationship with us is that in the Afterlife, a man is before God and asks him, that when i look back on my life path, I see two pairs of footprints. God says, they were yours and mine. The man asks, but at the most difficult periods of my life, I see only one pair. Where were you? God smiles and says, these were the times that I was carrying you. Its true that no human being can survive without God's help and guidance. Sometimes we are aware of how we are being guided, but mostly we are not. Focusing on the red, we forget that the mauve is infact ordained too. Yet sometimes, our belief system makes us forget about our own responsibilities in life as we become too prone to leave things to God. That is one of the negative sides of our culture influenced partly by sufism. Most of us believe so strongly in the power of God to make things right that we forget to play our role, and fail to recognize that we are to act first, and only then leave the outcome to God. In our social as well as our professional intaractions, there is a phrase that I have come to hate: " That is how it is". If something is wrong, people are not interested in making it right, they just want to edge their way past the problem. They feel it is not their problem,not realizing, that a problem that affects enough individuals in a society affects everybody in the end. There are very few people that I have met who take things seriously and strive to make changes for the better.They are the ones who make a difference.It might not be ones own problem, but the ability to make things right for everybody through individual efforts, is what keeps a society together. We must be able to discern what is the will of God, and what are the problems brought about by human selfishness, injustice and lack of effort. A little angst is good for oneself and everybody else.Angst means to worry, to be worried about possible outcomes and pitfalls in any situation. It is a German word, and describes very well the temperament of the German people. Angst makes them self possessed, cautious, well prepared and hard working.They leave little to chance.They work hard to keep the undesirable outcomes at bay. And consequently they are one of the most advanced nations of the world. I have never seen a successful person who is not careful, not well prepared and who leaves things to chance. To believe makes us strong to weather storms, but working to prepare for those storms is the result of angst. Angst drives us to action, and to take things seriously. How one balances the angst and to be able to surrender to God is crucial for success and peace of mind. Like this room, perhaps three parts red in life is offset beautifully with one part mauve.

Jealousy

Jealousy is a potent emotion. It revvs up our engine and motivates us to compete and get ahead of others. It makes us adopt unscrupulous methods to beat people that we are jealous of, human beings lie, cheat, conspire and even shed blood out of jealousy. It can rouse a person out of a sickbed and forge ahead, powered only by the hatred of the people he or she is jealous of. Among lovers, it can get even more dangerous. Killing a lover or spouse out of jealousy might be a commonplace happening, but it is a very real emotion within every human being, and does not bode well for the person himself or for others around him if it rears its ugly head. We have graduated to be civilized in some regions of the world, and instead of murder, leaving the person , perhaps noisily,is the preferred choice of civilized, rational human beings. But this emotion is the antithesis of reason. Im sure all of us have felt jealous of somebody at some point in our lives. The one who says i have never been jealous, is a liar. Jealousy drives people to keep on harming people who want to have nothing to do with them, to keep stalking and be curious about them long after the severing of ties. The innate desire to make a person fall, suffer, be humiliated, and to show themselves to be better than him all arises out of jealousy. But I think that , and my readers are free to enlighten me if im wrong, that jealousy itself arises out of the pain of feeling small, unwanted, inadequate, unloved and insecure of one's own ability to be good enough. Sometimes such people make a career out of trying to mitigate their own shortcomings by pulling others down which they feel are better than them, get more attention and love. But i have a question. Does pulling one down make oneself feel any better in comparison? I dont think so. At best, it can only give momentary satisfaction that is destructive for ones own being. And the end of it is always self defeating. Because jealousy is only an inverted desire to be loved and wanted. Jealousy instead of drawing people closer, draws them even further apart. Jealousy in our society has become the most motivating emotion in my opinion. We find ourselves inadequate in many ways and the more we are unable to achieve ourselves, the more we talk against others and connive to bring them down to the same level. We sometimes joke among colleagues that in the public sector, nobody is interested in work or doing a good job, but all are very good at politics and only concerned with what others are doing and how to pull them down. perhaps the private sector is like that too, i have no experience of it. Maybe our attitudes at large have to do with how we are brought up. Nuclear families have less family politics but joint families have a lot of it. In joint families there are a number of dependents who dont do anything and live off the pleasure of their elders. in nuclear families the people are more independent and consequently have less need of politics to get what they want. So what we learn at home we reflect in our behaviour out in the world too. It could vary in rural or urban settings. But jealousy/envy has captured our national psyche like nothing else. And its a destructive emotion. How we can get out of this vicious circle beats me. Perhaps if we became more independent and judge less on everything but our work ethic, jealousy could also become less active or atleast more in check. Playing straight is a difficult thing to teach and more difficult to learn where there are so many opportunities to be crooked.

A day in the life of a woman in public life

I got a rare comment last week praising me. Im not used to praise, but more to accusations, slander, character assasination. It made me think, i wonder if people realize how it is for a woman who ventures out of the house to work, to prove herself, to do her bit in public life? Perhaps we all do, at some level of consciousness. More and more women aree now working in Pakistan. Women in the office space are not an anomlay anymore. But women in positions of real authority are still few. Especially in public life. to some extent, they are to blame themselves for it. When they go out for work, instead of leaving the woman in them at home and bringing only the professional at work, they bring the mother, the wife, the woman and in some extreme cases even the femme fatale to the workplace. They look for concessions as women, want the easy way out, and as I see these days, fall into the trap of flirting and being seduced on their way to what they think is the top, but usually turns out to be nowhere. That is there, and such females ruin it for others, who want to be taken seriously and respected for their work and ability, rather than what they can offer otherwise. They encourage stereotypes, and people expect every woman who steps out of her house to work, to be open to suggestion. So much for the ones who use their gender( I wont use the other word) for advancement. They live their lives and make choices knowingly. My concern is the women who dont want to use feminine wiles to get ahead. Who want to prove their mettle through work and surpass the men. And believe me, most of the working woman want that. When i was studying and had aspirations as a professional, I wanted to do well in my work, develop a serious work ethic, and of course, being the feminist, be better than the men. With effort and gods help, I became that. joined a service where I worked constantly with men only and proved my capability and grit among them. I thought the story would end there. It didnt. I realized that as i did better and got to good positions, my colleagues would attribute every reason to my success but my cappability. They just wouldnt believe it. When it became too obvious, they would backbite and be mean. In an effort to be professional, I tried, and still try, to be a bit reserved until i get to know anybody. I see that men take this as an offence that why a woman who isnt bad looking, wont come to their office to butter them up. And if she is being friendly and nice, why it isnt leading to anything else. After many bitter experiences of having to shake people off very rudely, I just dont engage in conversation after a certain level. One would think it would end here. The self respecting ones understand and distance themselves, while the others become mean and start conniving. For a woman in public life, life is tough. From the moment you get out of your car, you are the center of intense attention from all males, high and low, and of course most of the male help think it is good measure to hum songs when they pass a woman. With the passage of time of course, they learn not to dare. But it takes lots of curtness from the woman. I do not like to be rude, but i have to be. If im not, they will be all over the place. So i would rather be known as rude than as that"chick who laughs a lot". Atleast when i speak, they listen. Dress is a major factor. the more you cover yourself, the more respectable you seem in their eyes. I thought it didnt matter if i was ok myself, but realized at my cost that our males are too backward in the public domain. A woman has to be either extreemely ugly or suitably covered to command respect. Then there are the ones who would not give up on getting ones attention. they wait for the time when you might need anything form them and they can use the task to get friendly. This kind sometimes creates problems for women just so that they can help them later and then get lucky. What i have learnt is, the less favours a woman takes, the safer she is. favours cost too dearly at times. I am in no way condemning men and women who find love at the workplace. Meeting somebody and liking somebody is a different thing, but using ones powers to get a woman's attention forcibly through incentive or harrassment is a crime. It should be discouraged at every level. But male chauvinism refuses to recognize or to confront such patterns of behaviour. My only reactions to such people is that if they wait for this woman to ask for favours, they will be waiting forever. I would rather not have things than to expose myself to such behaviour. All said and done, If a woman is good at her work, doesnt take undue favours and concessions, and remains serious and focused, always wins respect and recognition, even if it is grudging. In order to gain respect in the public life, a woman must learn to say no. To many things. She might not get as far as fast as her more unscrupulous sisters, but her success would be real. As for me, to all who praise me and pity me, I may be innocent and too kind, but I am not a victim,and would bbe against my self respect to be protrayed as one. I like according to what my values, and have no time for regrets.