One of the practices that genuinely helped me see my life as my life was revisiting my conditioning - the thoughts, patterns, habits, beliefs, behaviours that became ingrained in me.
That included the life choice I had been told are ‘a normal path’, the path I must take.
Remember Ivan Pavlov’s bell and the dogs getting all ready for food?
That is conditioning, its early phases at least.
Now, as I revisited my personal bells, also known as “you must act like a lady”, “enjoy life and be happy”, but also “graduate to be successful”, “get married”, “have children”, “find a (9-to-5) job”, “pay all types of insurance”, “learn to drive”, “get a mortgage to buy a house”, … I was shocked.
I fell into a rabbit hole of “do I really want this for myself?!”
Already questioning marriage, and don’t get me started on driving (at the age of 26, I still reject the idea of learning to operate a vehicle of whatever size or shape), I felt deeply intimidated in front of the the door that read ‘unconditioning’.
I found myself torn between the whole conventional graduate-marry-kids-mortgage-retire path and my actual, authentic values, dreams and aspirations.
(And seriously, the word mort in mortgage is not that appealing, is it not? The engagement ring posts on my Facebook wall don’t help either.).
The only way to get what you really want, is to know what you really want. And the only way to know what you really want, is to know yourself. And the only way to know yourself, is to be yourself.
Mike Dooley
Spoiler alert: It may get a bit poetic.
Our life is often colored, consciouslly or not, by the brushstrokes of societal conditioning, familial expectations, and the relentless pursuit of external validation.
Ah, that external validation. The archenemy of authenticity.
Yet, amidst these influences, exists a sacred space – a realm where our authentic selves yearn to be heard.
And where the first question emerges:
Are you moving towards what truly matters to you?
Here, I shout:
Becoming the advocate of our own choices is a transformative act of self-love.
Read that again.
It requires a pause, reflection, and genuine concern whether each step aligns with our deepest wants, needs and aspirations.
In this introspection, we consciously choose to liberate ourselves from the clutches of conformity.
Honestly, my initial confusion and unsettleness were the first destinations on the pilgrimage of self-love.
Another spoilet alert: Even the way we (struggle to) practice self-love is part of our conditioned self - think, what type of self-care have you seen others practice around you when you were a child?
It is so much easier to find and carve what empowers you when you just think about what makes you uncomfortable.
At the dinner table, the marriage conversation made me move in my chair, unable to find stillness. I should have thought about it sooner.
Are you moving towards what matters to others?
The second question has two profound natures.
The first one is the dinner-table, uncomfortable-in-my-own-chair nature.
This uncomfortable messenger is a cautionary note that solely moving towards what matters to others is not necessarily (and, at most, it does not), overlap with what it is that you truly want.
In my case, though I should get married (as claimed by my grandparents continuously), I never truly understood the purpose of saying “yes” in front of many relatives whose dinner is on my tab.
The little humans, however, were always an amazing thought to me. (Two maximum. The dad and I shall not be outnumbered.)
And here comes the second nature - the ripple effect of choices that extend beyond ourselves.
Whether we like it or not, and I cannot like it even slightly at a teambuilding with 50 colleagues, our life is not solitary. Humans are social animals (even the antisocial ones among us).
It is a balance between individual and collective purpose.
There is generational trauma and generational healing.
Choose what serves your growth - however you define it, and leave the rest behind.
Observe what it is that you want rather than what someone else wants from you (no matter how much love and respect you feel for that someone).
No, you do not have to get married so your family is happy you are ‘on the right path’.
Yes, you do have to think how your choices may affect others (I wish my parents had done that more often), but no, you should not let that be your only guiding light.
And, on behalf of the not-sure-I-want-to-get-married community, if you believe in marriage, don’t tell others they must too.