Hrvatska verzija dolje ↓
I grew up in a small town in Croatia. It is a place where ‘everyone knows your name’, and not just the name, but everything about you. Everything about your parents, grandparents, your primary and extended family. Things about you that not even you know about yourself, things that were never true for you, you think, but they know better. They know you and what you are better than you know yourself. And they don’t hesitate to spread the word.
Growing up in such an environment is an easy trap for people who don’t have a strong image of themselves. People who don’t know who they are. For people like that it is too easy to believe their neighbors. As they don’t know themselves, they are going to believe anyone who says anything about them. And they are going to accept that as being true. Like I used to.
Living in a place like that is comparative to the times of burning witches on open fire. The only difference is that now the surroundings are going to find you guilty, but the burning part you will do yourself. You are going to accept the accusation, and you are going to burn yourself alive. You are going to burn yourself in your own guilt, in your own blame, negativity, pity and sense of unworthiness.
In such a society and without your own identity, you feel it is an imperative to be accepted. You will desperately try to ‘fix’ the issue. You are going to spread yourself thin in order to prove to OTHERS that THEIR opinion about you is not correct. You are going to bend yourself over, twist and turn. All to fit into a pretzel you think they will like to eat. Problem is, you can never be twisted perfectly enough, or sweet enough, or brown enough for your neighbor to like. No matter what you do, he is not going to like your kind of pretzel. And you will suffer. Because for you the acceptance of these people is all that matters, it is driving your life.
You are going to live your whole life in this prison of ‘what will people think’. You are not going to allow yourself to decide for yourself. You are not going to allow yourself to enjoy things you would like to enjoy, but the ones that are ‘acceptable’ to be enjoyed and in the way they ‘are supposed to’ be enjoyed. You are not going to do things that you think deep inside are right, but the ones that the surroundings convinced you to be right. You will believe anything and everything your surroundings say about you, everything they say about justice, happiness, life and death.
You will also never question it. You will be so imbedded in that belief system you will call ‘culture’, ‘tradition’, ‘normal’, etc. It will never even cross your mind to ask YOURSELF what is that you would REALLY want? How would you live your life if you were given absolute freedom and be taken out of those surroundings? You will never take yourself out because: 1. You have no idea that you can (and you don’t even need to physically leave), 2. You haven’t seen many people doing it, 3. Those who did it and left – their life you don’t follow, so you don’t know what they have achieved, 4. Those who left and whose life you do follow – you believe they did it BECAUSE they left, 5. Those who did it and are still there living their lives as they please are simply – just crazy. God bless their souls.
I have lived like that for a bigger part of my life. I have also believed everything about myself that I was told. I believed the value system I grew up in was one and only correct, and I hardly ever questioned it. I knew exactly at any given moment what was ‘right’ and what was ‘wrong’, and how it is acceptable to live, and how not. Everyone seemed to be doing it the same way, so I was supposed to, as well. When I would do something ‘wrong’, which by definition was something that this specific environment was judging, I believed I deserved punishment. I deserved punishment because, even if I wanted to do that, even if I enjoyed it, even if it made me happy, I was ‘not supposed to do that’. Because ‘that is not something you do’, it simply isn’t. You are not allowed to question it, you are not allowed to say otherwise. Or are you? You never even ask! You ‘know’ you deserve punishment. Everyone has already made their judgment, so now it is up to you to proceed with punishment. And I did. I complaisantly obeyed. I punished myself even harder than anyone else ever could. I was my biggest critic.
‘It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society’ said a great philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti. That was indeed a sick place, and I was well-adjusted to its sickness.
Until I dared to ask different questions one day. Is this a kind of life I want to have? Do I really want to stop doing things I enjoy because someone somewhere doesn’t like them? I was reading more, and listened less to the news and people’s opinions. I traveled and discovered other cultures both physically and virtually. I found out that there is no such thing as ‘one truth’, there is no such thing as ‘normal’ – what is normal for us, in some other cultures may be forbidden by law. What some other cultures have discovered that is very detrimental to a human development, in my home town is still the rightest thing to do.
Why should it matter to me whether I was accepted by such a society? Who were these people and why was a bothered by their opinions? Why was I bothered if my so called ‘friends’ accepted me? If they really accepted me, they would accept the whole ME, not only ‘me’ who was doing how they please. Those were also not people I looked up to, they were not people I owed anything to, they were not people who achieved anything I strived for. I guess because they had no time, they were too busy minding everyone else’s business. Were these really people who should matter in my life? It was time to honestly answer all these questions, and start making better choices. MY OWN CHOICES, for once.
‘Što će ljudi reći?’ Cijena prilagodbe bolesnom društvu
Odrasla sam u malom gradu u Hrvatskoj. To je mjesto ‘gdje ti svi znaju ime’. I ne samo ime, već sve o tebi. Sve o tvojim roditeljima, djedovima i bakama, tvojoj užoj i široj rodbini. Stvari koje ni ti ne znaš o sebi, stvari koje o tebi nikad nisu bile istina, misliš ti, ali oni znaju bolje. Oni te znaju i znaju tko si ti bolje nego što ti znaš sebe. I ne susprežu se da prošire vijest.
Odrastati u takvom okruženju laka je zamka za one koji nemaju jak vlastiti identitet. Ljudi koji ne znaju tko su. Tim je ljudima prelako vjerovati svojim susjedima. S obzirom da oni sami ne znaju, vjerovati će sve što bilo tko o njima kaže. I prihvatiti će to kao istinu. Kao što sam i ja običavala.
Živjeti u takvom okruženju ekvivalent je vremenu kad su se vještice spaljivale na lomači. Jedina je razlika danas što će te tvoje okruženje osuditi, ali dio spaljivanja odraditi ćeš sam. Prihvatiti ćeš osudu i sam ćeš se živog spaliti. Spaliti ćeš se u svojoj krivnji, optužbama, negativnosti i osjećaju nevrijednosti.
U takvom društvu i bez vlastitog identiteta, osjećaš da je presudno biti prihvaćen. Očajnički ćeš pokušati ‘popraviti’ stvari. Raditi ćeš sve što je u tvojoj moći kako bi DRUGIMA dokazao da je NJIHOVO mišljenje o tebi netočno. Uvijati ćeš se lijevo i desno, plesati kako drugi sviraju. Uviti ćeš se u kiflu koju misliš da tvoj susjed voli jesti. Problem je što nikad ne možeš biti savršeno uvijen, savršene slatkoće ili rumenosti, baš onakva kiflica kakvu tvoj susjed voli. Što god radio, on neće voljeti jesti tvoju vrstu kiflica. I ti ćeš patiti. Jer za tebe, prihvaćanje tih ljudi je ono što je bitno, to upravlja kormilom tvog života.
Živjeti ćeš cijeli život u tom zatvoru onoga ‘što će ljudi reći’. Nećeš si dopustiti da odlučiš sam za sebe. Nećeš dopustiti da uživaš u stvarima u kojima bi želio uživati, već samo u onima u kojima je ‘prihvatljivo’ uživati i to na način da koji ‘se treba’ uživati. Nećeš raditi stvari za koje duboko u sebi vjeruješ da su ispravne, već one za koje te društvo uvjerilo da su ispravne. Vjerovati ćeš bilo što što tvoje okruženje kaže o tebi, sve što kaže o pravdi, sreći, životu i smrti.
Također nikad to nećeš propitivati. Toliko ćeš biti uljuljan u taj sustav vjerovanja koji zoveš ‘kulturom’, ‘tradicijom’, ‘normalnim’, itd. Nikad ti neće niti pasti na pamet da se pitaš što bi ZAISTA želio? Kako bi živio svoj život kada bi dobio apsolutnu slobodu i odvojio se od tog okruženja? Nikada se nećeš sam pokušati odvojiti od tog okruženja jer: 1. Ne znaš da možeš (a čak ne moraš ni fizički otići), 2. Nisi video puno ljudi koji su uspjeli, 3. Oni koji su to učinili i fizički otišli – njihov život ne pratiš, pa ne znaš što su postigli, 4. Oni koji su otišli i čiji život pratiš – vjeruješ da su to postigli JER su otišli, 5. Oni koji su uspjeli, i dalje tamo žive na način na koji sami žele, oni su jednostavno – ludi. Bog nek’ im pomogne.
Ja sam tako živjela dobar dio svog života. Ja sam također vjerovala sve što su mi rekli. Vjerovala sam da je vrijednosni sustav u kojem sam odrasla je jedini točan, i gotovo ga nikad nisam propitivala. Znala sam točno što je ‘pravo’, a što je ‘krivo’ i kako je prihvatljivo živjeti, a kako ne. Činilo se da su svi živjeli na isti način, pa tako sam trebala i ja. Kad sam učinila nešto ‘loše’, ono što je po definiciji bilo nešto što je to okruženje osuđivalo, vjerovala sam da zaslužujem osudu. Vjerovala sam da zaslužujem osudu iako sam to htjela učiniti, iako sam u tome uživala, iako me to činilo sretnom. Nisam to ‘trebala’ učiniti. Jer to ‘nije nešto što se čini’, jednostavno nije. Ne smiješ to preispitivati, ne smiješ reći drugačije. Ili smiješ? Nikad ni ne pitaš! Ti ‘znaš’ da zaslužuješ kaznu. Svi su već odlučili o tvojoj osudi, na tebi je da odradiš kaznu. I ja jesam. Ja sam se kažnjavala i jače nego bi me drugi ikada mogli kazniti. Bila sam svoj najveći kritičar.
‘Nije mjera zdravlja biti dobro prilagođen duboko bolesnom društvu’ rekao je veliki filozof Jiddu Krishnamurti. To je doista bilo bolesno društvo, i ja sam bila dobro prilagođena njegovoj bolesti.
Dok se jednog dana nisam usudila postaviti drugačija pitanja. Je li to život kakav želim živjeti? Želim li doista prestati raditi stvari u kojima uživam jer se nekome negdje ne sviđaju? Čitala sam više i slušala manje vijesti i mišljenja drugih ljudi. Putovala sam i otkrivala druge kulture, fizički i virtualno. Shvatila sam da ne postoji ‘jedna istina’, ne postoji ‘normalno’ – što je normalno za nas, u nekim je drugim kulturama zabranjeno zakonom. Što su druge kulture otkrile da je vrlo pogubno za ljudski razvoj, u mom rodnom gradu ljudi to gledaju kao najveću vrijednost.
Zašto bi meni trebalo biti važno jesam li prihvaćena od strane takvog društva? Tko su ti ljudi i zašto me brine njihovo mišljenje? Zašto me brine prihvaćaju li me moji takozvani ‘prijatelji’? Ako me doista prihvaćaju, prihvatili bi cijelu MENE, ne samo ‘mene’ koja radi kako se njima sviđa. To također nisu ljudi kojima se divim, to nisu ljudi kojima ništa dugujem, oni nisu netko tko je postigao nešto čemu sam ja težila. Pretpostavljam jer nemaju vremena. Prezauzeti su zabadajući nosove u svačiji tuđi život. Jesu li to doista ljudi koji bi trebali biti važni u mom životu? Bilo je vrijeme da iskreno odgovorim na sva ta pitanja i počnem odabirati bolje stvari za sebe. BIRATI SVOJE VLASTITE IZBORE, jednom u životu.