As a professional we get to
follow certain rules, the dos and don’ts that, we may also know as a job
description. When we move in towards our professional goal/s we also get a designation
that is who we are recognized as a person in a professional sphere. Moreover we
get the similar treatment based on our labels that we may lose once our daily
shifts come to an end. But the society that I belong to doesn't believe in
working-shifts coming to an end; our labels continue to speak for ourselves
till we either end up believing in the labels as our whole truth or we become friends with the labels upon us, quoting it as a social norm. Either way
in Lahore it is getting difficult for individuals like me to think and see
themselves beyond labels that we get on our never ending shifts.
My society shares a trait that
makes people impatient and intolerant towards anything and everything that is
1. New to them, 2. Doesn't go with their limited or unlimited mindset, which is
why we believe in judging everything based on our little exposure to the people
with similar mindset. Yet we enjoy calling ourselves as liberals, progressive,
open minded people living a life that developed countries can never achieve and
we should be proud of our denial.
In my Muslim Punjabi Educated
society it is not the appearance, language, understanding, exposure, brought up
or academics, that puts a label on me but it is mere one thought that; “I know
better than everybody around me” who is what and what is what. Yes we are born
genius and we get challenged whenever we see a person wearing black we would
label him a Shiite, a women in jeans is no doubt a slut, a women in burka is
the most pious person around us, and a women holding a cigarette is a bad
mother/wife/women and should be killed if she dares to smoke publically, a guy without
a job is stupid and doesn't work hard enough, a man with a beard will always be
wise and the wisdom grows as the inches add up to the length of his facial
hair. This is what we know and some prerequisites that we grow up with under
ordinary circumstances like average school, average parents and an average job.
We all are aware of it, we might
even sarcastically criticize this turmoil with humour, despair or ignorance, yet
we don’t do much to change it. Once our work shifts end, we continue to
socially kill ourselves by accepting the labels we get and our only survival
falls on not becoming a resistance to the chain that recruits another person
with a mindset of a born genius who knows it all. I am not the person who has a
solution to this noble cause don’t judge me like that, I'm just a guy who
brought this up on a blog. The words I speak are not my own.
