Society's Judgement or Our Own Uncertainty?

I’ve been reading a lot of articles and thoughts that spread all over the social media about our young generation complaining or sometimes blaming over and over again about what we so called “judgment”. When we come to age of maturity -which in our culture is 24/25 and so on- people tend to start catching up on us about the important matters in our life when we meet. And what is it all about, speaking of which?

Marriage, career, achievements, and even children.

“When will you get married with your long time boyfriend?”

“Hasn’t it been years since you two dating? When will it be official?”

“When will you pursue your chosen specialty? What will it be anyway?”

“Where are you working now? Don’t you want to have your own clinic?”

“I see that you posted a lot of pictures aboard in Instagram, you study aboard now?”

I heard those sentences almost everytime I meet my long lost friends, or families. And maybe most of us around previous mentioned age have been hearing the similar type of question quite intense lately. And it looks like there will be no end to those questions, it is not uncommon to me to hear people asking to someone older than me:

“When will you try for another babies?”

“Where does your son study now? He is a very bright kid I remember.”

“I hear your son has just got accepted at those multi national company? Congratulation for him.”

People will always be asking us about matters they thought important in life. And there is no harm about that, in my opinion. 

What is important in someone’s life is absolutely different from one person to another. Those happy wives will think that marriage is important and they will ask you about when will you get married, those successful friends who now run a well known restaurant chain will ask you about what’s your newest project is, those philanthropist friends of yours will ask about whether or not you have participated in creating a perfect corporate social responsibility in your office.

There will be no end to those questions.

According to my case, those people who asked me the question: my parents, my big families,  my dear friends, never judge me after I give my answer.

On “When will you get married?”

I usually will answer: “I do not have any plan to get married anytime soon, I am still in my clinical year pursuing my DDS degree. For now, I have two plan before I get married, after getting my DDS I want to pursue a one year master in health management or I will go to remote area, which also for a year, to do an internship in remote area clinic.”

For now, I love learning, I love traveling, and I love interpersonal relationship; in that order.

Maybe unlike what they know, what they thought, what they hope, my answer is not a quite common answer they usually get. But they understand, or even sometimes, open for a further discussion. Because I give them a clear answer.

A clear answer will come when I am certain of my choices. Whether it is common or uncommon choices, when I am certain of what I choose, people tend to support me too.  I don’t know about you, but in my case, that is the deal.

So, when people ask us “When will you get married?” -instead of showing them our own perspective of what is important in our life, how our goals set and how we put them in our very own priorities order- we get angry and call them judgmental, maybe we have to sit for a while, asking once again to ourselves, “Am I certain of my own choices, my own plan, my reasoning? Am I certain of what I stand for? Why do I got angry and offended over those simple question if I can clearly and easily answer it?”

From beaches, museums to highlands. Ubud, Singapore, Istanbul, to Kapadokya. Some of my latest journey I'm sure I'm in love with which I haven't been able to share in this blog, and promise to share it soon.