an open letter to men

8/10/2019 An Open Letter to Men

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An open letter to men… (perhaps women too!)

Dear fellow traveler,

It was hard to find the right word to address you – ‘the other half ’ came nearest, but wasn’t close

enough. It is not the cliché I’m afraid of, it is the lie. Let me call you ‘fellow traveler’, since we are travelling together. We, men and women.

What is it I want to say, I, the quintessential woman, to you, the quintessential man? First, the

inevitability of us. Whoever or whatever made the world made the male and the female, throughout

the entire living kingdom – mammals, birds, amphibians, fish… we humans too are part of the chain.

We humans have identified and categorized ourselves in quite a few ways, on the basis of religion,

language, occupation, nationality… I guess gender beats them all. We are 50-50 stakeholders. Yet,

we seem to be tugging in opposite directions at the two ends of the rope. Why?

From the war between the sexes to the search of soul mates, from DNA to subtle bodies, from the

bedroom to the boardroom much has been said, some understood. Yet, there is heartache. Why,

again? The last century has seen a rapid metamorphosis in the role and status of women. Women

have been protected and preserved, suppressed and exploited, by the paradigms of patriarchy. The

last century has led to some solid shaking. With women voting, getting good education, working and

earning money, the roles set out in the past have been challenged.

The macho man and the doll of the house are roles that have been mercilessly subject to the acid

test. The ‘doll’ not willing to be a puppet, has moved out of the house and the confining mindset,

and the ripple is causing the man’s role to be weighed and examined. It is not merely about

romantic fire rising to a high and turning to ash, with splintered dreams, because there’s confusion

about roles. The other relations too are affected. This is an age of questions, the full stop is being

changed to a question mark or a comma, new text is being added when it comes to gender roles.

Interesting, and sometimes painful. In societies where patriarchy has been the unquestioned norm

this has been a thorny affair. Marriages have broken, daughters have rebelled, mothers have cried

acid tears.

But that’s more on the surface. Let’s look at what happening below the surface – from where is this

force coming? What has led to this opening? Like everything manifest, its source lies in the subtle,

the intangible, often, the realm of the spirit. Sometimes when you look at how the structure of the

family has ‘suffered’ because of women changing their traditional roles, and even with society’s

fabric changing its patterns, it’s hard to think it is all spiritual. Some people say, “Oh! divorce is

spiritual? If women stayed at home and played the dutiful wife there wouldn’t be so much mess

around!” There has been endless mess around, for a long, long time. It’s just that it’s being cleared

now. The carpet’s being beaten so you can see the clouds of dust rising, and yes, some are choking.

The dust’s been there though. It’s clean up time, spiritually. Cleansing is essential before new

beginnings.

One needs to seek the truth, and a good way to begin would be to go beyond angry feminist ranting,

beyond blind chauvinism, and to see truly without the shades of conditioning of one’s own gender. I

suppose when one can do that, there is hope. From the hunter-gatherer days where muscle power

mattered along with skill, the male had a significant role in bringing home the bacon. Now the



proverbial bacon is available in the supermarket! The nature of the challenges has changed with

industrialization and the tech revolution, the gender conditioning and roles however, haven’t

changed with the times. The change is coming but like all revolutions, it is laced with tears. The

family is the battleground, the bullets are borne by the heart - man heart, woman heart, child heart.

Human heart. As an educator, I see how hard it is for children to cope with family break ups. Brave

fronts and broken hearts. It’s no use getting caught in the quicksand of blame. It still hurts…

So, what can be done? How is the man supposed to handle all this – the father, the brother, the

husband, the son?

First, stop struggling against change. Remember, all change is integral. A ripple runs across the

water, life is fluid. An idea that changes one part of the world affects other parts. Much as we try,

ivory towers don’t help, not in today’s world of tech toys and internet miracles – facebook, twitter,

24x7 news channels, emails, podcasts, youtube, easy blogging… people get to know what’s going on

around the world. That’s not a small thing, one wave rides on another. As the world turns, it changes

and everyone knows about it! People in Australia know about China, China knows about England,

England knows about Japan, Japan knows about India… This knowing and the ability to reach out to

people on the same wavelength, intensifies and deepens change. Social relationships in such a fabric

are inevitably influenced, particularly gender equations. The woman wonders if I can earn and fend

for myself, if I can produce kids and provide for them, why should I play second fiddle? When I can

live choose expression over suppression, freedom over fear, sincerity over manipulation, peace over

nagging, then why shouldn’t I? The reasons for staying on in a relationship are changing – and they

have to be good reasons. You cannot have only women happy at the cost of men or men happy at

cost of women.

There is deep and intense call from the collective consciousness of women to grow in a way that

hasn’t happened before in the history of the planet. Centuries of suppression or at least lack of

support have led the steam to build. Now, the steam is let loose with a force that will not withstand

any opposition. The woman is redefining her role in society. This cannot be stopped, it has to

understood and channelized. That alone with lead to harmony. If the spirit has taken on the body of

the female, the same spirit is aching to express itself in its entire glory. No more, no less. But the

structure of society has to be prepared, it needs to be chipped and changed, in certain ways it’s

crying for a paradigm shift. Time will tell what dynamics will prevail.

It is time to look beyond social roles. Understand that nothing is sacrosanct forever. Change is sacred

and necessary for the spirit to flower and find expression. This is the law of life, and the rigid mind

can do nothing to stop this. Nothing perhaps but cause more pain because of not accepting. Yet, it’s

hard. It is important to bring up boys differently. The toys need to be more unisex, boys can play

with dolls and cook, they can hang around while their mother is cooking and help instead of ‘being

with the lads’. If we are truly moving into a deeper, a more alive spiritual awareness then old norms

will be tossed up. Some will shatter. This needs to be seen and understood. It is irrational to expect

your husband to become a liberal romantic hero out of a new age novel, if he was not brought up

that way. They need to be caught young. When mothers and fathers bring up their children with

sensitivity, without claustrophobic gender rules, the children grow up freer. Men don’t have to go

out of their way to try to be stronger, heavily, louder, bolder, women don’t have to struggle to be

seductive, manipulative, sentimental, submissive. The qualities that develop are a natural unfolding



of one’s soul qualities. They needn’t been gender driven and determined, but a result of the

individual journey to growth. So, the ‘gentle’ man and the strong woman are not necessarily a

subject for lampooning.

Till now, society has been trying to create two perfect halves that find each other, complement each

other and live with each other, in a bid to create a harmonious exchange. Somewhere this has led to

discontentment and more. But now, evolution is taking humanity to a different plane. It is being

realized that growth cannot be isolated, no matter whose growth, men or women. Even if you think

the notion of interconnectedness and oneness is a colorful soap bubble from the spiritually neurotic,

the obvious social, geo-political connections, are… well, obvious. Men and women cannot grow and

be happy at the cost of each other. Happiness is not an ‘either-or’ situation. It is time, for not two

halves, but two wholes to merge to make yet another whole. The woman is moving fast to find the

male principle within her, the man too needs to find the female within him. When complete

individuals meet, miracles happen. Such is completeness, such is delight.

-

Harvinder Kaur

[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]



an open letter to men

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