My parents were never the type to compare their children to other people's children and they weren't the type to compare their children to one another either. I never felt I had to do better than any of my siblings. The pressure to live up to my sister's achievements came from my dad telling me that I can, if I ever chose to.
But that all changed when my sister got married.
During the weeks leading up to her wedding, I must have thought about suicide at least a dozen times.
All my parents had to do was to keep asking me who my boyfriend was and right away I'd feel like a loser. Add to that the dozens of relatives who keep asking when my lucky day was going to be. (not to mention the dozens more who thought I was the elder sibling and why on earth wasn't I married yet!) They had the passive-aggressive method down to a T!
I later discovered that lots of my friends were going through pretty much the same thing. While it may seem like our society has come a long way since whenever(KLCC, Sheikh Muzaffar, Putrajaya), pretty much the same mindset still applies to the average human life cycle.
Get born, grow up, study further (or not), get a job, get married, have lots of kids and live happily ever after (or not).
I'm not one of those picketing women's lib fanatic demanding for equal rights all the way down being able to walk around topless. I admit that I do want to find my 'other half' and share at least a few years of bliss before kicking the bucket. I'm just disappointed to know that our society still sees a woman as being incomplete so long as she walks around without a ring on her finger.
Our society's definition of success is still a tad shallow, I think.
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