The Pressure to Marry, And The Consequences
Questioner: Hello, Acharya ji. Currently, I'm financially stable, and I've been working for quite a long time. I started working when I was 17 years old. That thing made me quite independent, strong, and different from my peer group. I believe I’m a little different from them.
And currently, I have a government job, so I'm posted to a rural area. So, the environment is a lot like men-dominating, and there's a lot of pressure in marriage. So, in the last year, it influenced me to get married. So, I felt like I'm stable, like I'm making money and I'm quite satisfied with my life. So, I was convinced with this idea and I stepped into the hunt, and I met a person who claimed to be in love with me and claimed a lot of things.
I made some commitments, but it's been a few months, and I'm not comfortable with the bond, with the person, and with the idea of a long-term relationship with him. So the question here is: how will I get to know that the person is good for me? Like, what is love?
And if I'm choosing myself over the social norms or the person who is claiming to be highly dedicated and purely in love with me, but I'm not satisfied with it, my priorities are different — so, is it unfair to the other person? Is it being greedy? Is it like asking too much if I want to step back from here? So, is it like a superiority complex as well? I believe that I am a bit better than him, in some aspects. So, am I being way too greedy about my priorities?
Acharya Prashant: Stepping back… I do not understand, because I do not understand what it means to have a long-term relationship.
Questioner: Marriage.
Acharya Prashant: What do you mean by that? What is that? Yes, we are all very familiar with that word, but kindly explain.
Questioner: Marriage, like sharing.
Acharya Prashant: No, please, please…sharing responsibilities — today? Is that marriage?
Questioner: Not today, in the long term.
Acharya Prashant: So how do you decide on that? And how do you decide on that? And why must you decide on that?
Questioner: I was told a lot of such things, but mentally I'm not convinced with it. I believe I'm doing good, and I'm fine without such things, without these responsibilities, and without this partnership.
Acharya Prashant: So shouldn't that then simply close the matter? If you are already all right, then why do you need to step into something just for the sake of convention? That too, something that — as I said — we are very familiar with… but we probably do not understand. If you are good to me, if I consider this conversation worth it, I'll commit everything I have to you right now.
Why should I demand that you remain committed for the next 2,000 years? Why should I commit myself for the next 2,000 years? Isn't that just absurd? And I could as well remain with you for the next 2,000 years. But that would be exactly the way it is right now — step by step, day by day. Not that I'm particularly eager to fly away, but I also don't see the point in being able at this point, to commit something for the long term. What do you mean by the long term?
You're 27. You are committing something for the next 54 years. That's long term, right? Committing something for something, or for a period that's double your current age. How can you even manage to honor such a commitment? And why does the continuation of the relationship be based on this kind of a commitment?
If you like this conversation, you are most welcome to return tomorrow. And I'll be there tomorrow. Same time, same café, same table. Yeah, fine. No strings attached. You pay for your own food, I do for mine. Fine, wonderful. Or on alternate days, maybe. I'm asking this question: what exactly is this thing that you must get into even if your life is all right?
Companionship is wonderful. Companionship with the opposite gender too might be wonderful. But what is this idea that unless you are in a long-term relationship with somebody, there is something missing?
Long-term relationships are not a problem. A planned, thought-out, constructed-in-advance relationship is a problem.
It might actually be beautiful to grow old together, to be with someone for the next 50 years. But it's beautiful when it's day by day — not when it has been made binding upon you by forces of society, culture, and law. And why must you be so insecure? You know, let me get quickly hitched up, otherwise I'll be left all lonely, high and dry. Come on, you're all right.
You're young, you don't look diseased. You look educated. You say you are earning. You're all right. Why should there be such insecurity? And if you have an inner void, then the “Bhagavad Gita” is there for you. Great writers are there for you. Great arts are there for you. Great books, great philosophies are there for you. The saints have such great songs of love, they are there for you.
But you feel so obliged that you're actually feeling guilty, aren't you?
Questioner: Yes. The thing is, I'm getting a continuous knock on my door that I will not do what I have done before. You can do whatever you want. Your freedom will not be affected. Such promises, and the person is begging, and that's making me a bit uncomfortable — that, am I being unkind to the other person?
Acharya Prashant: You're supposed to be kind because you are, you know, a cultured Indian woman. And she must be the epitome of kindness. All the positive virtues she must display, right? Even on a single-seater bike, she must take the back seat. Even if you're sitting all alone by yourself in a café, still you must ensure that everybody else has eaten, and only then you will pick your food.
The problem is not that he's knocking and saying this or that to allure you or whatever. The problem is the guilt you are experiencing. Am I being selfish? You are entitled to be selfish. What else do you have in life except the self? Take care of it.
What else will you take care of, if not the self? But I am the Adarsh Bhartiya Nari, I'm supposed to be selfless — as selfless as Gandhari.** The Gita tells you that you are a human being. Gender is just one of the attributes of the body. You belong to the same species as the rest of us: Homo sapiens. We do not say because you are a woman, so... Womo sapiens. Do we say that? Interestingly, men would be momos. Forget me — my bad humor.
Create the right environment. You radiate both your clarity and your ignorance. Create an environment that reflects back your clarity and absorbs your ignorance.
That's what I mean by tricking the ego. Creating the right environment around yourself is extremely important. Imagine with the same question, had she gone to Tao ji, what would have been radiated back to her? Ignorance. And the decision would have flipped. Yeah, thank you.
Questioner: Thank you so much. Thank you so much for the team also making it happen. Namaste.
Questioner: Namastey Acharya Ji, My question is that I sort of feel a lot cornered in situations, and I feel like if I'm not loud enough, I'm not heard. Because we talked about anger, fear, insecurities, etc., the thing that is coming — it is birthing from my own insecurity. But the two most common justifications I use for the same is that my gender and probably my age doesn't make people think that I'm saying something sensible.
But I think that has become, like what I just said, a justification to overshadow my own inadequacies. Maybe I'm not actually making sense. Maybe it's just anger, and I'm trying to protect, as we said, my own ego. So I don't know how to come out of that in my own situations.
Acharya Prashant: Display results. That’s all. Gender, age — they all become irrelevant in front of performance when it comes to a workplace. Are you talking about workplace issues?
Questioner: Nodding in agreement.
Acharya Prashant: Nobody cares about anything more than results. We are here to produce results. I mean, you can be an IAS at the age of 20–21, right? You can complete your training two years later and you would be posted somewhere, or you could be the police in charge of an entire district, or you could hold some other responsible position all at the age of 23–24, and there would be people your father's age reporting to you — and dozens of them, all at senior positions. And they'll be reporting to you, and you are a 23-year-old woman. That's right. Nobody cares. Nobody can care.
You're a fighter pilot and you can have a massive patriarch and you drop a bomb on his head — would he refuse to die? “How can a mere girl of 23 smash my head? I refuse to die.” That won't happen. You can enter some great B-school or something and take on a manager's or administrator’s position again at the age of 22–23, and you'll again have a large number reporting to you. How will it matter? The powers vested in you, your designation — nobody, even if they have internal biases, still they'll have to play by the rules.
Let them have internal biases. That is their problem. You operate within a system that cares for result and performance. If people carry biases — too bad for them.
So many Nobel laureates — all young people. In fact, if you look at the age distribution of Nobel laureates, you will find something pretty interesting — a lot of young people there. In fact, it is more difficult to find old people there. 30s, 40s abound. In fact, beyond 40s, beyond the age of 50, the number becomes thinner.
There are young people who are doing great stuff, and they are succeeding, and they are being rewarded — and a lot of young women as well. Who is the only person to receive a Nobel double?
Listeners: Marie Curie.
Acharya Prashant: What, She was like 104 years old when that happened?
Questioner: Thirties.
*Acharya Prashant:** And that wasn't after all the waves of feminism and postmodernism. When was that happening? That was happening when the society and the culture were still more regressive than they are today.
And the problems she faced in even getting properly educated — and yet, a Nobel laureate twice over! I don't think we owe it to the people who gave us our macro legal frameworks — the framers of the Constitution, the egalitarian values that they committed us to. People may have their internal biases, but the external environment is pretty favorable to women. You are protected economically, legally. In fact, there is affirmative action. There is reservation as well for women in various spheres.
A lot of what holds you back is internal. And we are not denying the fact that people have their biases and all that. There is lok dharm, there is a deeply embedded sense of male superiority and those things. We understand that. But still, there is enough ammunition available for women to now fire. Even if the odds are still there, yet there is a lot of support as well. So focus on your performance. Focus on the results.
Questioner: Acharya Ji, What I find is that I get overly frustrated over these things, and then my performance — I mean, what is important — my focus shifts, and that is troubling me now, I guess.
Acharya Prashant: Why do you give importance to things that have little bearing on the final result you are supposed to deliver? There is a particular result you are supposed to deliver, right? And then there is noise in the workplace. A lot of that needs to be simply ignored because that has nothing to do with the result you have to deliver.
And if there is something that impedes the result you must deliver, then you must escalate — because there is somebody who is expecting results from you. Right?
Let it be known to that person that some noise is coming in the way of the result that I can deliver, and I can perform better if these kinds of disturbances are taken care of or there are problematic factors. Let it be known, because you are sitting at a place you're responsible for, and you are being paid for a particular result. So you go and tell the particular person or authority that my results can be better but for these...these...these things. So can you address these things? And if those things deserve to be addressed, they'll be addressed. And if those things are just random noise, then they ought to be ignored.
And you'll always have random noise, mind you. Never expect a perfect kind of environment anywhere. Neither do I have it, nor can I guarantee it to you. So all kinds of trivia are always around you, and it's your job to be discreet and know what to not consider.
Questioner: Yeah, thank you.
