Life sucks, she said to me.
My 24 year old son beats me up and so does his father.
I asked her what do they both do?
She told me her husband was an electrical contractor till last year. Then he met with an accident and now just lies in bed. He doesn’t do anything at all, not that he cannot move! He doesn’t want to because he believes he is hurt badly.
What about your son, I asked?
She said that she had put her two daughters and one son through the same boarding school after paying a huge sum of money. Both the daughters studied till post graduation and are well settled. They are both married and have taken up jobs.
As for her son, she said that, he left school and took up bad company. He used to do some part time jobs and drank away the money that he earned. Later, he lost the job and used to come to her and demand money. When she refused to give, he trashed her badly.
She said it is the same story with the grand parents and their children. Her father too bashed up his parents and took money for drinks. Finally both her elder uncles died of cirrhosis of liver.
How was her aunt, I asked?
Didn’t I know she died after drinking acid twelve years ago? She had a son who was madly in love with a girl. He made her pregnant and when her aunt went to request the girl to marry her son, she insulted her.
Her aunt came home and drank the acid. Her son too did the same soon enough.
I asked her how does she live now?
That’s when she said that life sucks. Her two daughters give her a few notes to carry on in life.
Such was her story. What can she do, she asked me?
I told her that she could work somewhere and earn a decent living. Her answer was very strange. I am uneducated and unlettered, she said. No one will offer her any job. Meanwhile, if she were to take up a job, who would care for her husband and son, she asked?
I had no answer.
The above story is not exaggerated or fictionalized. There are millions of women out there who are in similar circumstances who are seeking a way out. But when you show them the path, they give multiple reasons for not doing that. Why does this happen?
Why doesn’t a woman want to get out of that abusive relationship? Why doesn’t she want to run away to freedom from oppression? Why does she love to suffer?
The answers cannot be straight forward. One answer could be fear. Yes, fear is the root cause for even the most evolved people not to do anything or change their life circumstances. Fear of the new set of life path they might have to follow. Fear of the change of pattern in life. Fear of being responsible for their own life.
The second is inertia. Inertia makes them stick to their own places. They would rather suffer than move. Movement could alter their positions which is difficult to bear. Absolute inertia happens due to conditioning of the mind over a period of time. Accepting their situation and firming up that there can never be any changes effected. They have to suffer and they are born for suffering alone.
Religion and society has drilled it into their psyche that they were born to suffer. Even God suffered so why can’t they? Suffering gets them closer to God. Even the parent has drilled into their heads that they should become more tolerant. Society doesn’t like a woman who has gone away from social norms. This factor is also responsible for the person not to take a firm stand in their sufferings.
Giving up on life is one more. The idea that their life has ended and they should just live a few more years before death strikes them. Hope is lost for such people. They do not believe that there is a future ahead for them.
There could be a zillion reasons for not getting up and moving. But can we dissect them and rue over it? What use is thinking about the reasons or blaming someone else for the misery? Why not get up and walk?
The one single factor which could change everything here is empowerment of that individual. She needs the empowerment to get ahead and moving. She has to alter and make changes to her life.
How do you empower such a person? Do you know how it can be done? Spirituality has a path also. But few prefer that path. Tell me about yours? Hope you write some ideas to me here in response. I shall repeat the question again over here.
How can you empower a person who doesn’t want to get empowered(by offering reasons for not doing that)??
Image Credit: Pixabay
