"The
reason people find it so hard to be happy is that they always see the past
better than it was, and the present worse than it is, and the future less
resolved than it will be." -Marcel Pagnol
I am writing this in the context
of a second suicide case in two years in my University hostel. Both cases
involved young men in their 20’s and both point towards deep emotional trauma
as the cause for their extreme step. I am a die-hard optimist and believe in
the adage “Life is good, come what may”, and I have been distressed by the fact
that we have, as a society, been pushing individuals to the wall so much that
they decide to give up.
Why is it that it is young men,
and not women who took away their lives in similar fashion here? Is it because
the women on campus don’t undergo testing times? Certainly, that is not the
case. The answer, I believe lies in the fact that our society brings up boys
and girls differently. Boys are unfortunately taught to never be sensitive and
weak overtly. If you have problems, learn to deal with them by yourself. “Be
man enough” (!) is a common line hurled at them when they show signs of being
weak mentally or emotionally. I blame this tendency for the two suicides. We
fail to provide individual males with adequate support systems to deal with
stress, with anxieties, with insults and setbacks in life. We fail to provide
the sympathetic ear and the sensitive shoulder to the average male. This
problem is only aggravated in the case of bachelor research scholars who have
no regular classes to attend, no great possibilities of venting out pent up
emotions. If we had a system where every male was made to feel that it is okay
to take counsel from a close person, was allowed to release built-up emotions,
was allowed to weep, express anguish and show weaknesses, we could have
prevented such incidents.
I hope we can build a society
where individuals don’t strive too hard living up to societal stereotypes since
in this simple-looking process, lives are lost. This loss of lives is only the
worst (and dare I say, occasional) manifestation of a deeper prevalence of
unexpressed anguish, unresolved pain and unvented emotions.
Boys do cry, and they do have a
feeling heart, and a sensitive mind, and it is high time we recognize this fact
and prevent snuffing out lives of bright individuals who could have contributed
greatly to the betterment of our society.
