Parental love is nature’s way of ensuring procreation and progeny. When does it all really begin? In the womb? Or afterwards? When do parents really start caring for their offspring ? And is it that simple? Can
parenting be taught? Can you be coached to be a good mother or a loving father? One would have thought that caring for an offspring would be the most natural act in the world. So then can any parent wish ill-will
for their child, only or otherwise?
So what is going wrong?
What is causing our progeny to increasingly choose suicide as the way out? Is it lack of communication ,or a sense of failure,or something much more? And if the times are tough for the youngsters, are they really
easier for their parents ? Are THEY equipped to deal with the fast pace of a rapidly changing world?Do they have the coping skills ?And if they can’t keep pace, should they not dream, aspire , or have ambitions? What if we refrain from blaming the parents (already numb with grief and guilt), or the unhealthy peer pressure, or the inability to cope, or a fickle world dominated by social media? Is it time to look elsewhere..?
Society as a whole is not kind to anyone who is less than perfect.When we look around, we see a world where something is constantly being sold to make us fairer, handsomer or prettier ,richer, slimmer or smarter.No one talks about happiness. Even our love stories are about finding the perfect partner.No one talks about nurturing healthy wholesome relationships. We are conditioned to be discontented with what we have. We are programmed to think that happiness is just around the corner, if we only have the next best thing,that happiness is ours for sure. In Reasons To Stay Alive ,Matt Haig says – “ The world is increasingly designed to depress us. Happiness is not very good for the economy.To be calm becomes a kind of revolutionary act.To be happy with your own non-upgraded existence,to be comfortable with our messy, human selves, would not be good for business .”
But just imagine if we had a society full of perfect individials, wouldn’t they all be clones? If we had only clones, there would be no variation. According to Charles Darwin, an increased variation of traits in a
population actually increases the likelihood of survival of the species as a whole. Even if part of a population is wiped out due to disease, natural disasters or climate change , it is more likely that some individuals would possess traits that would help them survive and repopulate the species after the dangerous situation has passed. Otherwise the species would become extinct in no time.There is no Natural Selection at work in that population, where there is absence of variation.
So in the quest for perfect individuals, are we actually playing around with the laws of natural selection ?Then doomsday will be here soon, much sooner than we think or are prepared for! And in the meantime, many a hapless individual, who just happened to be made differently, will pay the price by giving up on life itself, rather than rejoice in his or her uniqueness.
What a loss ! And one for which we are collectively responsible…
- Contributed By Mrunalini Oka