A few years ago I was minding my own business on a typical Sunday afternoon, when my neighbor knocked on my door. The first thing he said to me was, “Is there a man in the house?” I did my best not to react to his very odd question, so I responded with, “Why do you need a man?” (which is an even more odd question when taken out of context… or not …) He said to me that he had a piece of furniture in his car, and he needed assistance bringing it to the upstairs of his home. At this exact moment my father emerged, and he asked me in Punjabi what this man was asking. I told my dad he needed a man … (haha my dad’s face.) “He needs WHAT?”... I explained that he needed help moving furniture. My dad asked him how heavy the item in question was… turned out it was a pure wood filing cabinet, so yes, it was heavy. Once we saw that it was not that big, my dad and I concluded that the 3 of us working together could accomplish the task at hand.
When it came to lifting the piece and bringing it in the home, the neighbor and I did most of the work. The stairs were too narrow for the 3 of us to fit there, and if you know anything about gravity, you would know that whomever was at the bottom of the stairs was doing most of the lifting … guess who that was? The only person who did NOT identify as a “man”... ME… the girl! As this whole thing was unfolding I couldn’t help but laugh. Don’t get me wrong, that cabinet was HEAVY, but it was not that bad. After the cabinet was upstairs, the neighbor praised me for helping him, and how I reminded him of his daughter who also helps him with stuff like this. This statement was interesting to me. This man who has a daughter was still seeking a man to do something that ANYONE could do. The truth is, he needed human help but just didn’t know how to ask for it. We have gone through cultural conditioning where it’s a man’s job to do heavy lifting, and as a result it’s even “wrong” to ask a woman for help. However, asking a woman to do a domestic task is acceptable. How interesting!
While we are on the theme of furniture, my father is a carpenter, and he makes a lot of furniture. He is currently working on a bed frame. This bed frame has a storage box at the bottom and is made of solid wood… needless to say … it’s heavy. My father asked me to help him carry it inside the garage so that he could put the finishing touches on it. As we were carrying the heaviest part, a single thought crossed my mind… a thought about how my father raised me. I am of South Asian descent, and I am well aware what the role of a daughter/woman is in this culture. My father has never placed limits on me and what I can do. Imagine if every child was raised knowing that they are limitless not only physically, but mentally as well?
We all have our own shit we deal with and we don’t need the outside world adding to our nice collection of crap. A few months back I was reading a book by Humble the Poet, and there was one point he made in there that stood out to me, and the point was simple yet so profound. He said that we judge the outside world based on what we see that is external to us, but we judge ourselves based on the thoughts that go through our own heads. Meaning we are much more harsh on ourselves than we are to those who are around us. What we think of ourselves is very powerful, and our thoughts are like plants, the ones we nurture and feed are the ones that grow. Every thought starts out as a seed, and these seeds get planted when we are young. Some turn out to be weeds and are harder to pull the longer we wait. It’s time we weed out the thoughts about gender roles and plant new ones about equality and equal opportunity.
Today, in the year 2018, I overheard a mother saying to her son, “stop acting like a girl.” When I heard these words carelessly fall out of her mouth the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I was witnessing the seeds being planted! Her son hurt himself and was bleeding, he simply asked his mother to clean his cut for him. When she put the rubbing alcohol on his cut he expressed pain. I do not understand why pain is associated with being a girl. Is it because boys are not supposed to express their feelings? How much of it is nature and how much of it is nurture? Stereotypically, guys who express more of their feelings are considered “feminine,” but the truth is we all have both masculine and feminine within our person. Different aspects of our personality come out at different times and there is nothing to be ashamed of who you are.
Question your thoughts, be more self aware of the conversation you are having in your head. How do those thoughts affect your actions and those who are around you? We create our own reality and we have influence over what happens external to us. In order to see changes in the world, we must embody those changes.