Safety net

This old lady on the bus today looked like she’s done.
Done, with life. It almost seemed like everyday is a tasteless task that she is reluctant to do. I, silently sitting with my aviators, was imagining the reason being loss of her husband and perhaps lack of love from family and relatives. I almost felt cruel to be making all these things up in my head, though her facial expression screamed nothing else but renouncement.

It brought me to think about relationships and sacrifices. Dedicated mothers giving most of their lives to their children; their kids come before themselves. Blinded lovers surrounding their focus, thoughts, and time with significant others; some to a point where their lives are not of their own. Ambitious workers working all their energy and time away for money and satisfaction that don’t seem to ever be enough. Though these relationships take on different perspectives, the givers are common in that they are living for somebody or something else.

If our world ran on a system in which we were born designated either the role of the giver or the receiver, I think I would be more than willing to be a giver who spends all her life doing things purely for another person. In reality though, our intelligence is trending towards individualism, especially in feminism. We’ve been taught to put ourselves first, ultimately. As a girl, I’ve always been taught by my mother to have a job and a life in the future even after I get married, because it is unimaginably easy for a person to leave, to just “ditch”. When someone else is your literally everything, you have nothing if this someone left you, and that is no longer romantic.

So, what happens when we fall in love? My mother would say, you must have a passion in life, something that you can do regardless of what falls apart around you.
Is it true? Get yourself “insured” with something constant, something that doesn’t fade on you... Better safe than sorry, right?

Life patterns such as these are such a tease. One can have a person whom he is free to dedicate all his love to, but he still got to “back himself up”, just in case.

You just can’t have the cake, and eat it too.