sane and happy

In a cry for help, I scheduled my annual wellness check with a physician on Monday, knowing fully well that I’ve been feeling absolutely obliterated lately.

Aside from blandly going over my normal vitals, my physician encouraged me to exercise at least 150 minutes per week and journal every night before bed. She said the routine could help me with whatever I’m going through. I’m struggling to find the motivation to exercise beyond my weekly 45 minute yoga class, but I figured I could try journalling and make it more of a habit.
The last two nights I journaled in my diary and left small goals for myself to achieve the following day. My goal for yesterday was to go to High Low (my favorite local cafe) to be productive, which I happily accomplished. My goal for today was to start journaling on this website and to finish my week of linguistics lectures on Coursera (yay).

I think setting small achievable goals for myself both gives me a reason to get up the next morning and to go to bed feeling like I accomplished something that day. In a broader sense, all of the little goals that help me get through each day will add up to the larger things that will make me happy in life. It makes me think really critically about the next five to ten years and where I see myself at my most sane and happy.

pick your poison

The concept of modernity is relative. What is modern to someone in rural Alabama may be outdated to someone in New York City. What was perceived as backwards to Europeans in the 1800s (like the concept of gender equality!) was normal in many matriarchal cultures and is a north star that I strive towards everyday.

I lived in Pune around 2005-2010, and undoubtedly Indian society as I knew it was decades behind the US when it came to attitudes around women’s rights. But relatively, it had improved significantly from when my grandmother was growing up. I watched a movie on Netflix recently, called Farha, that is set in the late 40s, not too long before my grandmother was a teenager. The titular character Farha, a Palestinian girl, is at risk of getting married to her cousin at the age of 14, rather than going to a bigger school in the closest city like she has always wanted to do. She has one supporter, her uncle, who encourages her to continue studying and stay with his family in the city so she can go to school.

My Aaji was a Farha of her own time, and it’s sad to think that not that long ago (and still today in many societies), you needed a man to stand up for you to fight for what should be a basic human right. Kunda Aaji grew up in a village on the coast of Maharashtra, far from the nearest metropolitan that I have grown to love dearly, Pune. Kunda Aaji’s older sister, Baabi Aaji - had been wed and shipped off in an executive decision by their father when she was only 16 years old. She gave birth to her first child at 18. The year after Baabi Aaji got married, their older brothers were able to find employment and a place to rent in Pune together—which is how they convinced their father to let Kunda Aaji go to 8th grade while she stayed with them. Of course, she still had to cook and clean for her brothers around going to school and studying but that was the far better alternative. And that is how my grandmother escaped being a child bride herself—she had older brothers living in the big city who cared about her enough to change the course of her life. Baabi Aaji was less fortuitous despite being only marginally older than her sister, and she never studied past the 7th grade.

As an adult, I know that neither of my grandmothers had much say in the men they married, and that marriage and motherhood was part of a duty that was expected of them. Women’s rights being a relatively new concept in my family (lol), I am faced with reconciling generational trauma from those who came before me with the options I’ve been handed on a platter: to study for many more years, to love whom I want, to live where I want, etc, which sometimes plagues me with the paralysis of choice. I wonder, am I (or any human with options) truly better off than someone with fewer options? In obvious ways, such as escaping child marriage, the answer is yes. But there will always be a road less traveled and a “could’ve, would’ve, should’ve.” I can pursue further education, move across the country for a job, and have my own career. I’ve already gone down that road, but this is where I see it fork. I could continue to do that for the unforeseeable future to some capitalistic end that’s been crammed down my throat, or I could soften myself and channel my aspirations on balancing work life and family life—I could get married, have kids, buy a house, the whole nine yards. Better yet, Bobby and I could go live on a farm in Costa Rica.

This isn’t to say there are only two or three paths for me: life is not a two-pronged serving fork, but rather a tree with endless diverging branches, growing new branches every day. Maybe I’ll get married and pursue my writing, maybe I’ll quit my corporate job and travel the world and never settle for one home base. Maybe I’ll decide that I do not want children. Which, in Indian society can be a bit controversial to admit. I think our culture is unfortunately decades away from realizing that it is possible for women to have fruitful lives without being mothers. Regardless, I imagine myself to be a subway train barreling ahead at full speed while the track itself is being laid. Nothing is certain so there is no point in planning years into the future. I just hope that I have the strength to remember my free will, and to push back when it feels taken away from me.