This is the age of the computer. Information is available throughout the world via the internet. Education is more readily available today then it was a hundred years ago. Women now contribute to the society not simply by being homemakers, they are out there making up a huge percentage of the workforce. There are women now in all walks of life. It has become commonplace for women to be in law enforcement, quick response teams, the military and many other fields which were previously dominated by men.
The women in these professions earned their places by hard work and dedication. Sometimes, they sacrificed everything they had to do their jobs. This has made it easier for other women to follow in their footsteps. Yet still all over the world women are oppressed. They are looked down upon in many ways. They are considered incapable of looking after themselves. Women are patronised and not only by religious fanatics who misinterpret the holy word but by well educated men and other women.
I have recently met a few people who consider the women they are dating to be totally incapable of taking care of themselves. One of them use the poor excuse that the woman he is dating is young and immature. While that may be true, she is not a total imbecile. This is just one of the many ways that women are looked down upon. Why is it that people are slowly accepting a woman's place in the workforce yet, consider women still totally incapable of self preservation?
It is in not merely annoying, it is insulting. Imagine telling a young professional man that it is not safe to take a cab home at night alone? He'd laugh. However, no one thinks twice about telling a woman the same thing. What makes a woman more vulnerable? This is the day and age where men are raped as well as women. We perpetuate the image that women are weaker and easier targets simply by handing out this random bits of advice. If more people started advicing men to be mor careful as well as women, perhaps a criminal will start thinking that maybe a women is not such an easy prey after all. People are people the world over. The fact the they are male or female is just a random choice of nature. Women don't have the words 'weaker sex' tattooed across their forehead and men are not stronger simply because they are men.
Start treating people as individuals and not as male or female. There are strong individuals and there are weak individuals, what gender they may be is completely irrelevant.
Just Me.

Astrology, fortune telling, divination, tarot cards, cyrstal balls. Some of the methods used to tell the future. We're so preoccupied with the future. That's what we think about all the time. Everything we do is geared towards the future. In work, in study, in play no one thinks about where the are, except when they are thinking about it in relation to where the want to be. I am reminded of Yoda in the Empire Strikes Back. He was saying that Luke was always thinking of the future. His mind always on where he wanted to be never on where he is. I think that is true of all us. We spend our childhood eagerly waiting to grow up. Rushing toward it. Then we progress into our teens thinking we're adults. We rush about trying to be 'grown up'. We speed along the path looking ahead always trying to catch up and be somewhere else. We end up frustrated that we never get to where we're going because where we want to be is always far off in the future. We never realise that the reason for our unhappiness and frustration is our own ever changing expectations. Our expectations keep moving ahead. We reach the goals we set for ourselves today and then we discover that we've already set a new goal. Then we realise that we can never reach our goals because they move as we do. They move forward as we move forward. As if that isn't bad enough, we're also curious. There is a burning desire to know what lies in our future, to see if we can evade the bad luck that lies ahead. My cousin was told that in his future lies a terrible accident. Now he is sitting grounded by his mother because death is supposed to haunt him on wheels. I can't say I don't believe in divination but if we were to believe in everything that is predicted in our future, we'd never leave the house and still we'd die if our time were up. Live your life to the fullest. That way you die with no regrets. A friend once told me the most profound thing I have ever heard. He said, we start dying from the moment we are born. And if that is true and there is no doubt that it is, the only thing we can do is to enjoy the life that we have been given. We were put on this world to learn. We learn everyday. We have lessons that are taught to us everyday that we are alive. We learn to be better people. That's the meaning of life. If we were to concentrate on the present and a little less on the future, I have no doubt that we would be happier.
Always believe that where you are today is exactly where you were meant to be.
Just Me.

Relationships. This is something everyone has experienced. I don't mean relationships in a romantic sense. I mean relationship in an everyday sense. We have a relationship with everyone we are close to. Everyone has had a relationship go sour on them and sometimes their left feeling totally confused. I know that's how I feel. There are friendships that I was so certain would last but now only a year later has turned into something less then a casual accquaintance. I don't know what went wrong. I mean we were friends and we were good friends and then suddenly we weren't any more. I don't know if it's the distance or the difference in professions or something else entirely. I mean I thought things were going great. It certainly seemed that way. The emails were always lively and fun. We kept in touch and we kept each other informed of the events in our lives and then suddenly the emails stopped.
I suppose relationships are hard even on a good day and this is just a prime example. I generally don't have a problem keeping friends. I mean, my best friend has been around for 17 years now and we're still going strong. Sometimes I think it's just a personality clash. Mostly, I think it's the fact that people are afraid to be honest. They are afraid to be honest with other people and they afraid to be honest with themselves. It is difficult I know that. Honesty can really hurt. Especially when it comes the time to admit something not so nice about yourself. The only cure for that is to remember that everyone has their little flaws and that no one is perfect. If anyone claims to be perfect that person is lying. Perfection is an ideal, it is something to strive for. The only problem is by the time you achieve it, you've been dead for a couple of years. Cheerful thought isn't it?
Honesty goes a long way in helping smooth the troubled waters of the relationship sea. It keeps the pretence to the minimum and it takes all the guess work out of the situation. It certainly helps things, because I know from experience that most people are just bad at guesswork. I should know, I suck at it. So let's all try and be a little more open, a little more honest and maybe, we won't have to work so hard at relationships.
Just Me.

I have exams. They drive me crazy. You know recently I attended a conference where one of the topics of discussion was "Are examinations a violation of our children's rights?" I was very interested in that of course. I was also very surprised by the audience at the conference. There were a number of students as well as educators there, and it was very interesting to note that, a lot of the students did not seem to think that exams violated our rights. I suppose it's a sign of maturity that these students recognise examinations as a necessary evil. Are examinations a violation of our rights? I suppose there isn't an easy answer to that. I suppose there has to be some way of evaluating our progress in our education. If there weren't any examinations, how would we know if the student has learned anything. I mean putting a child in a level of education he or she isn't prepared for is more cruel than anything an exam can cause. However, as with many other things, we have taken a good idea like an exam and become very stupid about it. Come on, what is the point of examining kindergarten children for crying out loud!
I think the answer lies in our approach to exams. Exams aren't evil but neither are they the life and death ordeal many students seem to think they are. Examinations are only a method of evaluation. I think the emphasis we place on exams are wrong. I can't think of an answer, especially now that I am quite wrung out from my examinations preparations but I feel that we place too much pressure on our children to get good grades. It doesn't matter that the good grades don't seem to correlate to a better life, parents seem to think that if you do well in exams your life will magically fall in place. The truth is rather more complicated than that. The top students in school were always the ones who no one knew. No one knew them because they were shut away in their rooms, studying, or running from one tuition to another. These kids spend their formative years shut away in the dark forgetting any social skills they may have picked up. They grow up into brilliant but dysfunctional adults. this is always true of course, but everyone agrees that genius is just the flip side of the coin from insanity. It's a mark of our time that we tolerate insanity more readily, we welcome it in fact. Still I think pressuring the children to excel in their studies at the expense of living is just plain mean. Hopefully starting now, we will remember that examinations are just a matter of evaluation. Hopefully with this realisation, less children will feel pressured to kill themselves over bad results.
Just Me.

I just watched Bend It Like Beckham. I loved it! It was a very cool. I think the movie managed to capture the conflict that many of us face today. I am speaking for the Indian community of course, but I think the situation is similar in other cultures as well. In the movie, the whole contradiction of the Indian society in England is well portrayed. It is difficult to live in a society that is totally alien to you. The natural reaction of people who are in this situation is to cling to the familiar instead of embracing the differences. It alienates them further from those around them and creates tension and mistrust that is difficult to alieviate. The movie really presented the facts like they are. It's difficult to be a part of society if you spend all the time closeted with a certain group of people. The Indian community has been in England for ages now and they still barely get along with the rest of the society. They don't trust the whites and they think they're mistreated and the whites feel the same way.
I mean I know what it's like to be an Indian in a community like that. It's alright to mix around with them but it's not okay to get too close. How can you be somone's friend if you don't look beneath the surface? How can you have an honest relationship if you don't allow your true self to shine through? The problem is, most of them think that they're better then everyone else. That's not the way to make any friendship. Many still carry a grudge from 50 years ago and we all know how well that works. This generation is still being blamed for the mistakes of the last generation and in blaming them we're ensuring that the next generation will never be different.
Just Me.

I have a grievance. I hate rude people. People who are bad mannered just rub me the wrong way. The worst thing, it's a culture. We have made it a culture to be rude to our peers. We see it as a sign of closeness. It isn't. It's just plain rude. The more time I spend with my friends, the more I see their bad manners. I am not talking about cussing and swearing. That happens often enough and I am not about to tell someone how they should express themselves. I mean instances where people take you for granted. Where you are 'ordered' to do a favour without so much as a 'please'. I think it's only fair that if you're asking someone for a favour, you have the courtesy to ask them nicely. How difficult can it be? How much effort would it take to be nice to someone? Would it be too much to ask for some pleasantness? They say familiarity breeds contempt, and the things I've seen among friends and family certainly prove that. Does it have to be that way, though? Surely it doesn't take that much effort to be civil does it? Taking someone for granted should be outlawed!
Just Me