A circle is a simple shape that we use unknowingly in innumerable ways in our day-to-day lives. We create circles around an important piece of information to help us focus on it. We create circles to add value to just a number. We create circles as a halo above God. We create circles to separate unwanted things. We create circles to depict a failure. We create circles to illustrate victory.
Circles have been institutionalized in myriad ways since humans learned to read and write. But why has nobody questioned the intransigency of a circle?
We use a circle as a boundary to declare authority and mordantly design lines across things to suit ourselves. We’ve used circles to categorize things into what our society approves and are sadly hardwired to follow it.
Sets
Remember the concept of “sets” that was first introduced to us in our math classes? Well, basically a set by definition is a collection of distinct objects for example, colours, numbers, cars, names, et cetera. A set is also separated into specific sets of anything that we want to create a category of to solve the equation. And how is a set diagrammatically represented? A circle. But why do we have to separate things? Why can’t we let them gel together? Why can’t we let them be what they are?
I’d like to draw an analogy here to our school days. We all have during our school years come across situations where our “guides” tried to mould us into exemplifiers of the definition of “good children”, only later to be realized by me that there is no “real” definition. I was baffled a little bit then because on one side my teacher told me that good children always secure full marks in tests but my parents still said “good job” even when I scored less.
I was lost, misguided, peer pressured to do things and was making meaningless efforts because like the rest, I was inevitably put in the race to reach the denouement where I would be told whether I was a good child or not, a winner or a loser. Gradually it dawned upon me, the harsh reality of it. I had started losing myself somewhere amongst those attempts to perfectly satisfy the definitions laid by both teachers and parents. I was incarcerated within the circle of propriety that is actually subjective but ostensibly, believed by the people around me, as objective. When the primal question should have been what kind of a person we’d want to become, it was in some cases already chosen for us or in some lucky ones, a category given of approved societal choices to choose from.
Please listen to Calvin everyone
After wasting some years of my life, living someone else’s definition of myself, I decided to de-categorize things and be nothing but – me. And by far that’s the best decision I’ve made.
Coming back to the “circle” that is also like a ring of fire, a bit different ofcourse. Here, we use it daily to construct a wall around things, leaving behind unwanted “residue” of objects/humans/feelings that we don’t want in tandem or a group or have a biased against. A bit like forming stereotypes that in psychology mean, “a fixed, over generalized belief about a particular group or class of people.” We use these to manipulate our actions and behavior differently for each stereotype that we know of. We give the society, the power to form our opinions instead of allowing ourselves the freedom to experience and find out.
Stereotyping has been part of our civilization way too long as a guiding principle to behave in a certain manner towards things. The “set” theory is based on the same principle above which means it leaves behind things that we THINK don’t fit together.
While categorizing stuff we lose out on the opportunity of trying something different, maybe infusing our energies together and experiencing something great. Or even if our energies are repelled, a lesson follows.
While growing up chronologically and mentally we create a maelstrom in the minds of people on whom we impose our definitions of an ideal person.
But there is nothing such as an ideal person!
#preach
We’re all so diverse in our ways and cognitive abilities that assigning an ideal person for everyone is an impractical concept created by bigoted minds. The only thing that we can be is ourselves and that’s extremely pivotal.
In our desperate efforts to turn the people we have an authority over like children, into a picture that fits our “circle” of opinion, in reality, backfires and makes them handicapped in the remotest things of regular life. Why? Because we never allowed them to know themselves! We never gave them the permission to recognize their fears, discover their goals, make mistakes, to handle their failures and wander alone uncovering new things about themselves without our instructions. We never “approved” of what THEY wanted to do because the society doesn’t endorse unconventional things and apparently that’s more important than the quality of humans we might end up creating.
There’s no easy way out of this labyrinth. It will require us to retrospect and learn about something out of the realm of that circle we’ve drawn inside us, a step away from our comfort zone. And that step is something a very few of us are willing to take, breaking the notions. A child or any other human for that matter is not a robot that needs a code to make every choice but is emotionally available to like or dislike a thing according to his/her own taste. The kid who got straight As in his report card, the kid who got into the world’s best college, the kid who is an all rounder, the kid who wins all competitions and so on, we’ve all been compared to these “sets” created by the society as standard indexes of excellence. But a majority of us have found ourselves placed outside of these clichéd sets; because we’re unique and certain indicators of success cannot be the only definition of the capabilities that billions of people possess.
These circles house our prejudices that later culminate into behemoths of xenophobia, nativism, cynicism, et cetera and then forcing it on others causes harm in the process. The practice of shaping up kids in accordance with the restricted vistas of the society is like a loop inside a “circle”, a perpetual process. It’s an unfortunate ring of fire where they’re forced to suffocate under the reeks of ordeals of unscripted real life because they come in terms with the harsh truth that there is no common solution code for every problem. That their “guides” cannot help solve every hurdle by following some line of instructions because some battles are meant to be fought alone. But again unfortunately, here we are in the 21st century, still living in that barbaric circle, still idolizing the devastated victor of that “ring of fire”, still following the herd mentality, still becoming the target of someone else’s definition of our self and still coveting their hollow victory.
Leave behind your envies, worries and fears to explore your own dimensions at an unknown land of opportunities.
Musings Of The Curly Haired Girl 