That sounds like a cliche caption for any Instagram post which hopes to shed some light on the realities of life. But to me, it isn’t some archaic caption that needs to be updated, it’s more about the set of expectations that we have to live with, whether we set them for ourselves or society sets them for us versus the reality of our lives.
Ever since I was a child, I have always tried to do my best in school. But when I did try to do my best I would also eventually and inevitably stretch myself too thin. There have been times where I would not be able to go to school on test day because I was too exhausted and my mind was basically shutting down and there have also been days where I have been a nervous wreck due to pent up stress and fear of my inability to achieve the goals I have set for myself. To this day, it takes me at least 30 minutes including a couple of reruns of “Don’t Stop Believing” by Journey, to calm my nerves before an exam. This is a story that is all too familiar to most people. Much like myself, all of us have certain expectations from our lives. It could be expectations in the form of academic excellence or a promotion or even just pushing yourself out of your comfort zone. Most motivational quotes have a simple and similar mantra— to be productive and useful, you need to step outside your comfort zone. While this mantra hold true in all shapes and forms, one has to wonder what is the price that we are paying to be living life on the basis of these terms.
So what happens when these expectations aren’t met? In my mind, I anticipate that when that happens, the world around me will inevitably become chaotic. But in reality, nothing as nearly as extreme as that happens.
However, it is important to understand that while there are expectations that we set for ourselves, some of them are set by us due to influence from various external factors. Most of us over the age of 15 have a very long standing relationship with social media. We have all seen the pictures of models looking beyond perfect on their feed, or on magazine covers, and more often than not we want to be like them. But we fail to realise that in the process of trying to achieve this apparent perfection, not only do we subject ourselves to these insane standards but these standards now become the norm for society. Women and men alike are subject to these standards and are expected to adhere to them and what’s more unfortunate is that those who do not meet these standards are subject to taunts and mockery by society. With the rampant use of social media, this culture forms the foundation of a toxic environment and is the root cause for extreme self esteem issues in people who do not meet the expectations set by society. It's important to understand that what we see on the magazine covers to on social media are artificially created pictures, with thousands of editing tools and obscene amounts of makeup to create what we perceive as embodiment of perfection. For most of my life, I used to have the same expectations from myself. I would be lying if I said that I haven’t been the punchline of many jokes because my appearance is not what society deemed as acceptable. Society as a whole has to be able to recognise and correct the fact that we cannot and we should not have these expectations from any individual. No one should have to live with these self determined yet externally influenced expectations as they do not reflect reality. Fortunately, over the last few years, as this culture is challenged, reality is moving away from these expectations and people have been open to changing their mindsets and are well on their way towards the creation of a more inclusive and kind society.
Moreover, besides self determined expectations, there are also standards determined by society depending on your gender or your age or your occupation. All around the world women have been subjected to and asked to adhere to the sexist norms that have been put in place by a patriarchal society. These so called rules have been forcing women to stay at home, stay in the kitchen and be a demure housewife because that is what is expected of them. Furthermore, the expectation from women is also one of marriage. There seems to be an appropriate age at which women should get married which is not a choice left upto them but decided beforehand by society. The global patriarchal society deems what is right and chooses what women can and cannot do, almost as if they have no voice. Not only that, in India, teenagers who are at the cusp of their lives do not have the freedom to choose what they want to do. The concept of allowing children to choose their own path in life is one that most of society is not very familiar with and it is what puts a strain on the same children who are forced to pursue these apparently noble and worthy careers even though their interests may lie elsewhere. These are expectations that are enforced by society on women, on children and the reality is often not very different. It is only in the recent years that parents living in metropolitan cities have encouraged their children to pursue other careers which are not related to the mainstream options of engineers and doctors. It is only recently that the world is learning how to provide equal opportunities to men and women.
When we talk about living with the burden of expectations, it’s important to understand that there are many factors that drive them, both internal and external. As individuals, we have to learn to be kind to ourselves, to understand that life isn’t always going to go the way we expected it to go, learn to recognise when the pressure of living upto these expectations becomes a burden. In the midst of this pandemic, negativity runs rampant, we don’t need an added burden of living upto insane standards and archaic gender roles to snuff out even the sliver of positivity.
Mindsets need changing. People need convincing.
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