People are always talking about “remember where you came from” on the one hand. On the other hand people are always reprimanding “don’t live in the past, stay present.”
Now, these two phrases seem contradictory don’t they? They could become combative at some point in time, as well. For example, as one gets older one begins to lose family to old age and death and the family history starts to fade. If that history reveals a different culture than the one lived in now, that history becomes sad memories, so one must choose whether to stay in the past or remain in the present.
The present begins to feel foreign because it does not incorporate the past cultural differences. This can be a sense of traumatic displacement. Don’t even mention the fact that being older is a displacement of its own. Along with age, joint pain, limitations loss, and a unique kind of isolation, one is tempted to lose oneself in past memories and native roots.
But truly, is it good for you? Betty White might agree with me, it’s better to let go of the past, whether culturally different or not, and embrace where you are now–albeit a newer conglomerate of a culture. Yes, incorporate the two; make something new, but live now. It doesn’t matter whether you’ve got a slew of limitations, don’t let them bog you down.
I learned this the hard way. I tried to hold on to the past instructions in a marriage, but it only served to make me gradually insane. I let go of the old Latin moniker “housewife” and began to see me more as a single independent thinking woman with a similar partner–my husband. Yes, I’m still married legally, but I’m not married emotionally in the way I was taught: a woman who belongs to a man, waits for her man, has no identity unless her man gives her the one he wants her to have. I let that me go…
Let me make a point here. It isn’t the man that does this to a woman, it’s the old voices and the cultural past that keeps a woman [miserably] obedient to it. Further, it’s the old instructions, badly interpreted–or wrongly understood. Whichever it was, it is not supposed to mean a woman is supposed to be stepped on for convenience of her husband, no. It means there are roles to fill, and as the world recognizes the strength of the man, it is more constructive for him to represent the family publicly. Whereas a woman is much better at organization in the home, having the attention of the children and the husband when it comes to structural dictates of the home. Hence, she is better qualified to run it. There is no shame in running a home, and maybe this structure doesn’t work for everyone. Perhaps a woman is better prepared and already in position of representing the family because she married and did not THINK to make sure he was qualified for the above mentioned job: her fault. She can go to work. He can stay and watch the children, and you better HOPE he was gifted with structuring the household. Okay, enough of that. It hurts everyone at first, to figure our everyone’s role, but soon, if they work at it, they can become a single exceptional unit called the FAMILY–Everyone still together, but separate in emotions, intellect, and personality. After all, when we die, we can’t take all our loved ones with us, can we.
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