The Road between Social Responsibilities and Own Happiness.

Written By: Nazah Nawaz

We live in a society where we are bound by our culture. We have great influence of our cultural norms. Whenever a kid wants to do something the first thing that worries the parents is, what the society will think? What the people will say? Either its about choosing a profession or simply wanting to marry someone you like. We are always bound by some unseen social ties.

Few days back, I got a chance to work at a public hospital for community work and that was an eye opening experience for me. For the first time in my life I got to see the ugly side of our society. First day at work, we were sent to OPD where we had to take histories of the patients and ask them about their problems. There I met a lady who was sitting as if she is going to fall down. I thought she might be suffering from something serious so I went to her and asked what is wrong? Does she want anything to drink and if there is anybody with her? She started crying and told me that she came here alone because no one was ready to take her to the hospital and when I asked why is that? She told me, it’s been 1.5 years of her marriage and she lost her first baby in September 2014 who died because of diarrhea just after 4 days he was born and now her in laws are forcing her to conceive a baby again or they will get her husband married to an other girl. It was quite shocking for me because it’s been merely 9 months since her first baby died and she can have one in few more months, why are they threatening her to get her husband married again? To which she replied that it was her love marriage and she was really happy, everyone was happy but now her in laws including her husband thinks that she can never be a mother again so she should go back to her parents, as she told me and I’ll quote “ My mother in law said, what good a woman is without kids? Go back, Go back, no one needs you here anymore” and with this she started crying harder.  I wrote down her history and took her to the doctor myself and told her if she needs any help, she can tell me. Two things that I learned from this, first, we have so much social pressure on ourselves that we have forgotten how to stay happy  rather we kill our dreams, our happiness to keep everyone around us happy. Second, a simple act of kindness does the wonder. I can and will never forget the way she held my hand while crying and telling me how thankful she is just because I listened to her story.

It merely took my 15-20 minutes but she was so grateful and I was so ashamed for everything she has to go through. All this time I have been thinking its us who make the society, we intentionally or unintentionally do the same things that everyone else does. If we can’t bring a change or break the social ties, the least we can do is to give someone our shoulder to cry on, be there for people, not because what they mean to us but because how greater the feeling would be to be there for someone. But my question still stays, Can we change the society by changing ourselves or is it going to be like this forever?