Happy Humans

I recently had an interesting conversation with a young male friend. We spoke for hours on technology, life,  purpose, innovations and society. We shared our perspectives on incidents, people and trends.  It was nearly 2 hours and then suddenly I realised that it was time to leave. But we both did feel incomplete at the end. It was a feeling of not being able to finish sharing all our ideas and that there was more to be given and received. After the conversation, I felt joyful and positive. We were receptive and open to each other's ideas and even had  contradicted arguments in between. During the conversation he also mentioned that he found it interesting to have an intellectual chat with a woman.  I was surprised at that note.  Why? 

In our society, right from childhood, thanks to gender stereotyping, we are used to getting segregated to groups within one's own gender.  For eg: Girls tend to gang up only  with girls and boys with only the boys.  Very rarely we had friendships with boys and girls together.  Well, this led to more distorted gender views and most of our patriarchal and feminist viewpoints emerged out of this. Look around, most men have an immediate male friends group with whom they get to hang out,  explore their ideas and also are comfortable sharing their worries.  Women mostly are expected to have this circle of friends within their family and relations and hence many of them lose their school / college friends.  Men in our society also rarely engage in intellectual talks with women friends unless its part of their professional /organizational requirements.  They would normally pursue a female friendship if they are romantically inclined and opt to have the "intellectual conversations" with male friends.  Thanks to the skewed gender norms, even if they wish to have a platonic relationship, the society around tries to place the romantic relationship burden on the friendship.  

This skewed gender norms end up with men extending unwanted sexual retorts or advances even during professional interactions. As a woman entrepreneur, I have received various messages from men commenting about my profile picture even when I forward  an information or marketing material.  I always wonder whether the same men will comment that way for their male friends' forward messages. Probably they will comment about the message first and then later in the conversation about  their picture or even  completely ignore such talks. (Or Could it be because they may be judged as gay if they say "You look handsome" to a man and they may be considered cool when they say, "You are gorgeous" to a woman? ) 

Unfortunately, men in our society are not trained on how to express appreciation to a lady without offending her initially. And women in our society are expected and trained to accept even offensive comments with a smile.  Even during professional conversations in groups, men have commented silly about the color of my saree, my skin or my lipstick when they can compliment it more politely.  Of course such comments may be passed on because they have been so tuned from younger days to look at a woman's body and attire first than her mind or ideas. 

The current generation of teens and young adults tend to have much better relationships with the opposite gender compared to the previous generations. They are receptive to each other's ideas.  However we still have to go a long way considering the fact that we have so much of #MeToo stories everywhere. A recent news report about  some school kids sending vulgar/sexualized  messages /rape threats about their own classmates was shocking not just for the parents but for everyone.  Over exposure to sexual content,  objectification and distorted peer pressure abstaining interactions with other gender could lead to worse repercussions.  

One way to counter these issues is to nurture and foster friendly relationships among boys and girls, men and women in all walks of life.  In schools and colleges let us stop having separate benches and desks for girls and boys. In workplaces and boardrooms let us have more women share their ideas. In social interactions/ parties let's not have separate groups for women and men. 

As a society we need intellectual, emotional, philosophical and deep conversations with people despite their genders. The gender norms many times denies the opportunities to have such conversations and we end up losing on great collaborations and outcomes for the world.  

And in life, we need to have deep friendships and deeper relationships with whom we can share our vulnerabilities, our ideas, our passions etc whichever gender they are.  Married couples end up frustrated when they are expected to have all these from each other. Practically speaking, I have realized that we cannot expect every kind of relationship needs to be fulfilled  from one person. So, as a human being,  we may need some people for catering to our emotional needs, some others for intellectual and some others for physical needs and sexual needs.  Our traditional society tried to put the burden of having all the relationship needs put on few ties named as "marriage" or "family".  Sometimes I wonder, are these unfulfilled relationship needs the reasons behind the rising incidents of extramarital affairs? Considering the  rising number of these cases, the above theory could prove right.
Now, its time to have more egalitarian viewpoints and realise the folly in the olden ways.
We need to compartmentalise our relationship needs. Keeping aside sexual relationships as personal preferences, we as human beings need to have relationships and conversations with people of different age, gender and profiles. Some days we ought to hangout with children, some days with older men, older women and some days with younger men, younger women and some days with people of same profession or age. I am sure this will improve  our social quotient and social intelligence.  

And guess what, a 75 year long Harvard study proved that having solid friendships is in fact a key aspect of a happy life.   

Let us lead a happy and fulfilled life instead of a grumpy and dissatisfied one ! Have great friendships and collaborations across barriers of gender, race, ethnicity or culture. Let us become happy humans.  

#CeeVee 
January 2020 

P.S: This article may be viewed as contradictory to what I am doing currently at Prayaana - Forming women/girls self help groups. Well,  that's a need specifically for economic empowerment and professional development.  What I wrote above is about wholesome development of an individual - both men and women. 😃 

References: 
1.Read about the Harvard Study on Health and Happiness
2.Read about the School kids rape threat news