In a way, it was easier when you were chubby babies. Your needs were of the moment, simple to satisfy. An ice cream cone was all it took to turn the blue moments sunny. But I knew it even as you licked at the cone that these straightforward days would not last. A day would dawn when your needs would evolve to new and complex levels. There would appear turbulent phases and narrow passages for you to negotiate on your way to autonomous adulthood.
I watch those days approaching fast with the wistful certainty that I had it a lot easier than you. In retrospect, I think my teenhood gave me that feeling of security on one hand and was porous enough to feed my personal growth on the other. Ambition or contentment, I had the option.
Your generation is dealing with a lot more. A career is no longer a luxury. With greater freedom has come the burden of choices and their resultant consequences. There is a complexity in the world you inhabit that I did not have to unravel. You are adrift in the ocean earlier, running on your own steam sooner. I don’t know how to clear your confusion or to ease the pain except to assure you that I am here, in the wings, always on hand.
It is not career related decisions or subject options that I worry about. You are smart enough to handle those on your own. It is your choice of potential partners that gives me the jitters.
Where do I begin? My mom gave me no such blue print. But again, to labour the point, I was not negotiating any downstream as you may end up doing some day. There is that greater liberty of space and distance that may or may not prove a friend to you, depending on how you use it. Yes, I do trust your judgement but then you are young with only so many reference points. What if you took a wrong turn for lack of any spelling out by an adult who cared about you?
I couldn’t live with that regret. So here it is, with no mincing or beating about or diluting. A man and a woman cannot ever complete each other. They can never be everything to each other. There is nothing like a perfect, made for each other fit. Only you can complete yourself. You are your own entire and correct fill in the blank!
Somewhere out there, in this wonderful wide world, there is a guy who is right for you. Not perfect for you but right for you. And the rightness emanates from that most basic of requisites for any human engagement to flourish: respect. Respect for you, your views, your needs, your aspirations, your family and your friends. An Adonis may leave you weak in the knees but does he respect you? The free spirit you fancy reforming may be fulfilling a very human need to feel needed but does he respect you?
Not passion, nor chemistry and most certainly not the so called “you are my everything” love. I root for “respect” in a man-woman friendship over and above all of these shimmery mirages. By all means, befriend the other gender but don’t part with your heart merely at the sound of Cupid’s dart !
I read this quote somewhere, “Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction.” It is credited to Antoine de Saint Exupery who was an aviator like your dad and incidentally the author of my first gift from him, “The Little Prince”.
PS: Switch the address of this note with “Dear Sons” and every word is relevant still.