Women’s Day Is Gone, But Let Us Vow To Celebrate Each Other Always

So, this girl left her husband. Why? It must have been her fault, too much education leads to such ending.

So, this girl left her husband. Why? It must have been her fault, too much education leads to such ending.

Every year when Women’s Day is around the corner, I know that there will be write-ups to read and documentaries to watch on gender violence, pay discrimination, honour killing and other heinous crimes that are committed against women. As much as we need to raise awareness about such issues, we also need to rethink about the respect and understanding that we, as women, demonstrate or give to one another.

In fact, I personally feel that I have not always shown enough respect to many women in my own life. Without any hesitation, I can admit that I have been rude to my mother and I have criticised my cousins many times. But I believe that I am also mature enough to declare that I had been wrong, my behaviour or conduct was inappropriate.

Have we been raised to respect all

Our communication or the way we express ourselves is usually poor when it comes to others because we do not give much thought about the consequences of our actions. In our head, we are always right. Add to that, the stress of our everyday lives does not allow anyone to visualise a pretty picture.

Besides, majority of us have not been raised in an environment where we witnessed respect been given or shown to women in the household or other people in general on a regular basis. Simply think about the way our elders speak to domestic help at home or the irritating voice we use to negotiate with the salesgirl at a shopping mall. The conclusion is, we are not very respectful to others because we are in our own bubble for most of the time. In addition, respecting others was not part of our primary socialization lesson at home. Moving forward, when we went to school or the secondary socialization began, we respected our teachers because we had to, we were afraid that if we do not then we will not be promoted to the next class. So, the natural process of learning to respect others never occurred.

The art of criticising others

At home, we witnessed our grandmother, aunt being bitter about our own mother, criticising her from dawn to dusk because the curry was too spicy or our father’s shirt was not pressed so it was pretty much self-explanatory that we must also adopt such attitude and criticise our mother, sister or any other female species because this is what everyone does! Criticise girls or women!

So, this girl left her husband. Why? It must have been her fault, too much education leads to such ending.

That girl is a very good student. But she is so arrogant, only sits with her books all day, she has no communication skill at all!

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Look, how easy criticising gets! We are so excellent at criticising that we can criticise both good and bad at the same time! You must give yourself a pat on the back for your skill of criticising.

Changing our vision to interpret things

Things can be different. In fact, we can make things different with love and understanding. We can express or interpret situations in a positive way.

No, she did not leave her husband because of her education. They were unhappy with each other.

No, it’s not that the other girl is only a good student because she sits with books all day but because she is a hard worker. As far as her communication skill is concerned, perhaps you can also try to put her at ease when she is around you. You can ask ice-breaker questions such as what kind of cartoons she likes or which is her favorite holiday destination and discuss your own with her.

In fact, it is quite possible that your constant criticism of her, made her appear to you as such that she has no communication skill but her teachers and friends see a different side of her everyday that you are not acquainted with.

So ladies, let us change our mindset and learn to celebrate all the girls and women who surround us because each one of us is special and unique. We have to deal with various issues in the outside world anyway, let us not make life more difficult for ourselves by constantly criticising and being disrespectful to one another. Let us look forward to catching up with one another instead of fretting over what comment would be made about my weight or dark circles this time!

If there is hurt, let us empathise, provide support in any way that we can. Smile at each other and ask questions to build rapport. It does not cost money to ask how are you or are you ok? This way, we can at least count on each other and look unto genuine friendships.

Image source: Hansuan_Fabregas on pixabay 

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