You are young. Fingers are being pointed at you. You are annoyed yet powerless. They keep telling you how you are supposed to spend your life until there comes a point when you are nothing more than a machine following instructions. You don’t have a personality. They said you didn’t need one. Yet to crave to have one. It’s safe to say that you’ve been scared, and it’ll take time to heal—a long, long time.

That may have been the childhood that some of us had to go through, though I may have exaggerated a bit. But it is true, whether we like it or not, so many of our actions are dictated by others. In the past few weeks, I’ve met quite a few people and gathered interesting stories, which I’ll share in this blog. These are people who were forced to take certain actions just because society wanted them to.

The first story is from someone who I met recently. We go to the same 9 a.m. lecture. Since it’s a 9 a.m. lecture for which attendance is not mandatory, you can imagine that there’ll only be a few people around. The thing that surprised me the most about her is that she is merely skin and bones. I’m shocked as to how she is even alive. I eventually asked her, and she told me that she used to be quite chubby! However, his friends and relatives made fun of her for being that chubby. So what did she do? She began starving herself. Quite literally. She told me that every day she would wake up feeling nauseous, just because she hadn’t had enough food. She kept up that routine for several months and in a year, she got to the state that she currently is at.

I don’t know much about this, but as far as I have researched, according to Asian beauty standards, skinny women are considered beautiful. That is how Asian society has informally defined beauty for women. It’s just sad to think that so many people go to extreme lengths just to be accepted by others.

The second story that I have is more interesting. It’s from an older lady. It’s from the hall receptionist. One day we strike up a conversation, and she tells me that she’s Buddhist. Since I’m a Muslim, I was automatically curious and asked her, “Why do you believe in Buddhism?”. She didn’t have a direct answer. Instead, she told me the stories of her friends who decided to revert to some other religion. As expected their families didn’t accept their conversion positively and the parents of one of them ended up disowning them, and she was forced to leave.

Now she didn’t say this part out loud, but I think it’s clear to see that, she didn’t want to question the belief of her family, after seeing what had happened to her friends. What makes this even more concrete is that she isn’t even practicing.

It’s kind of fascinating, how we do so many things just to be part of society, and at the same time how we don’t do so many things just to be part of society. Now this seems like a cringey question even to me but, are we really what we want to be, or are we just the product of what others have come to expect from us throughout the different phases of our life?

But you know at the same time, if everybody did what they wanted, I feel like the world would be slightly chaotic. If no one had fear of judgment from one another, then everyone would be screaming out their hearts in public. But that’s just a hypothetical scenario, maybe the world would be a better place that way.

So as with everything, we have to strive for a balance, in how much we fear others. Now what that balance look like? I honestly don’t know. You’ll have to figure that out on your own. You are young. Fingers are being pointed at you. You are annoyed yet powerless. They keep telling you how you are supposed to spend your life until there comes a point when you are nothing more than a machine following instructions. You don’t have a personality. They said you didn’t need one. Yet to crave to have one. It’s safe to say that you’ve been scared, and it’ll take time to heal—a long, long time.

That may have been the childhood that some of us had to go through, though I may have exaggerated a bit. But it is true, whether we like it or not, so many of our actions are dictated by others. In the past few weeks, I’ve met quite a few people and gathered interesting stories, which I’ll share in this blog. These are people who were forced to take certain actions just because society wanted them to.

The first story is from someone who I met recently. We go to the same 9 a.m. lecture. Since it’s a 9 a.m. lecture for which attendance is not mandatory, you can imagine that there’ll only be a few people around. The thing that surprised me the most about her is that she is merely skin and bones. I’m shocked as to how she is even alive. I eventually asked her, and she told me that she used to be quite chubby! However, his friends and relatives made fun of her for being that chubby. So what did she do? She began starving herself. Quite literally. She told me that every day she would wake up feeling nauseous, just because she hadn’t had enough food. She kept up that routine for several months and in a year, she got to the state that she currently is at.

I don’t know much about this, but as far as I have researched, according to Asian beauty standards, skinny women are considered beautiful. That is how Asian society has informally defined beauty for women. It’s just sad to think that so many people go to extreme lengths just to be accepted by others.

The second story that I have is more interesting. It’s from an older lady. It’s from the hall receptionist. One day we strike up a conversation, and she tells me that she’s Buddhist. Since I’m a Muslim, I was automatically curious and asked her, “Why do you believe in Buddhism?”. She didn’t have a direct answer. Instead, she told me the stories of her friends who decided to revert to some other religion. As expected their families didn’t accept their conversion positively and the parents of one of them ended up disowning them, and she was forced to leave.

Now she didn’t say this part out loud, but I think it’s clear to see that, she didn’t want to question the belief of her family, after seeing what had happened to her friends. What makes this even more concrete is that she isn’t even practicing.

It’s kind of fascinating, how we do so many things just to be part of society, and at the same time how we don’t do so many things just to be part of society. Now this seems like a cringey question even to me but, are we really what we want to be, or are we just the product of what others have come to expect from us throughout the different phases of our life?

But you know at the same time, if everybody did what they wanted, I feel like the world would be slightly chaotic. If no one had fear of judgment from one another, then everyone would be screaming out their hearts in public. But that’s just a hypothetical scenario, maybe the world would be a better place that way.

So as with everything, we have to strive for a balance, in how much we fear others. Now what that balance look like? I honestly don’t know. You’ll have to figure that out on your own.