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A few months before my friend got married, she told me she would quit her job. She was a teacher in a secondary school and was earning peanuts. Her husband-to-be had convinced her the salary was not worth it; he was earning well and the money he gave her monthly was more than her pay. Teaching was also a demanding job, especially in her school where every teacher was required to take after-school lessons. So after careful consideration, she and her husband decided it wouldn’t make sense for both of them to work and “come home tired”. One needed to tend to the home and kids.
When she told me, I was apprehensive. For someone who grew up seeing too many women stay in abusive marriages because of financial dependence on their partners, it’s a situation I want none of my friends to be in. I also knew that she loved to teach and although the pay was poor, it brought her joy. Becoming a stay-at-home mother and running a small scale business was her settling. Or so I thought.
Sometimes when I reflect on my friendship with, let us call her Faith, I am reminded of how 2 people, different and parallel in their thinking, can form a friendship so deep. I am a strong advocate of women working. Having a career is not just about the salary but also acknowledging my capability as a problem-solver and a go-getter. Beyond that, it is also about needing more women in the workforce to open doors for even more women. So, naturally, I tried to convince my friend of the importance of working, climbing the career ladder, having more to look forward to beyond the home, having something you can call your own, and, of course, making and having her money. She didn’t budge. But along the way, I am learning and leaning into the power of embracing differences, even when I do not understand it. But above that is also respecting people’s differences. It is her life and just like she trusts me to make the right decisions for myself, I must respect her choices and trust that she chose this life for herself because she knows what is best for her.
My friend and I couldn’t be more different. I am a feminist through and through, but she is more traditional in her thinking. She believes her husband is the head and she a, I don’t know, follower? I, on the other hand, do not believe in heads and necks or tails – or whatever part of the body women are these days. When I think of love and relationships, I think of partnerships; two whole and equal people coming together. She believes in gender equality but doesn’t see the hullabaloo of it all. I wouldn’t discuss gender pay gap with her or talk about glass ceilings and she wouldn’t talk about traditional roles in marriage with me. But I’d tell her when I’m weary after a hard day’s job and she’d talk to me about the hurdles in navigating the complexities of being a SAHM and we’d both be there to listen and encourage each other. And that is the beauty of our relationship.
There’s one thing my friendship with her and my other friends is teaching me, and it is respecting people’s wishes to be who they want to be or live their lives as they please – even when I assume they are not aspiring enough – without pushing too hard or assuming I know what’s best for them. And, being who I am, this can be hard.
In a thread I read sometime ago, a man shared how unlike him, his then girlfriend wanted the simple things of life. She was comfortable with having a job, not having a huge pay, a roof over her head, food on her table, clothes on her back, the love of her family, and a beautiful relationship. He was the opposite; the kind who pushed hard for more, and at all times. The one, who having attained a milestone, immediately starts looking for the next big thing. He wanted luxury; a topnotch career position, luxurious car, a highly accomplished life and he worked hard for it. He wanted more, she didn’t. To him, she was lackadaisical and he couldn’t understand why she was okay with what he considered the minimum when she had the potential to be more. So he pushed so hard until they fell apart. In hindsight, he sees how her contentment and satisfaction with life was misconstrued for a lack of ambition. He also sees that it is okay to be satisfied with little and for some people to not want to be caught up in the never-ending rat race seemingly ambitious people barely get to win. This successful life that always seems out of reach because they keep stretching their hands towards the beyond. This chase that leaves them unfulfilled because their eyes are fixated on the bigger things that they neglect the little, and this future that brings so much consternation because they do not pause to bask in the present. For people like him and me, we think we are ambitious because we wouldn’t stop running and chasing and reaching – mind and body. For people like her and my friend, it is okay to not want to constantly chase and simply enjoy the littleness of life. And there is no wrong or right in how either of us have chosen to live, there are just differences – in the way we define accomplishments. In the lens through which we see life.
But I am learning, when I talk to my friend, to see things from her lens and not project my dreams and wants on her. I’d be miserable if I were her, but I would not even wish the constant anxiety and sense of unaccomplishment that plagues me on her. And when we talk, we chortle at the thorns and joys in our paths until our bellies hurt. Until the corners of our eyes burn and tears run down our faces. Until our voices fade into the night, and we are quiet.
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