Taxes. We all pay taxes. Taxes are what enable a government to run a country smoothly. They tax us for everything – eating, drinking, driving, living and sometimes even thinking. We’re taxed for everything. Some pay it lump sum while some like me, pay it in pieces through the year so I’m not found begging on the streets for that particular month. For how much I earn, I pay 3 months salary as my tax, not to mention what I pay outside of it in Value Added Taxes and Service Taxes.
Well aforesaid taxes are what we pay to the government so we aren’t declared outcast or aliens on a land that we so deserve to live on, no matter which country or continent. We also pay a few other taxes of which one is the tax of expectation to our society. And we pay it day in and day out. This isn’t monetary – well in some forms it is as well!
Right from the day we’re born, or let’s go further back. Right from the time, parents either decide to have a child or that sperm gets loaded involuntarily, doomed is that little cellular structure. All those sperms that never made it, expected to perform, died trying – they paid their tax for being incompetent in death. But they were lucky for they had a safer death. The one that made it, frankly never got to do that small victory dance! 5 weeks later, after growing enough, it starts receiving medication and attention and is never left alone. Just enough space to survive and thrive in. Outside that tummy though, unknown to that little thing with no brain, are soaring expectations. Sons will make a doctor, daughters will need dowry.
We are and were all doomed to end up the way we have. Only a few escape the clutches of their parents, only to end up getting caught in the frenzy called OUTSIDE WORLD! The rest pay taxes like me. We’re salaried/businessmen/doctors/artists. That little brain of ours works day in and day out to earn a living. We’re shown the door for being ourselves. We’re influenced, lack originality, and life as I see around us, sucks beyond belief. Mine does. No other example is good enough.
Next we’re married, expected, not to find our true love, but to give the parents a child that can carry the family name. Some of us find that true love, while some unlucky ones get caught out at the hands of vicious wives and husbands. These other halves tend to have their own expectations that are levied without permission upon those super-burdened shoulders. They want your money, your social status, hold no interest in your parents, and love remains unheard of.
Every single moment of our life is built from expectations. Your own and others too. You want to do well all the time. Who wants failures, for failures are rejected. Expectation though means fear. We keep fearing for our destiny and forget to live our life, the only thing that’s in true sense perishable. I’ve done this for 30 years everyday and every single minute and find it extremely tough to pull out that magical moment from a work day, to pull out of this vicious loop that I’ve gotten into.
And so I write. I write to vent it all out. But watching all of those who wish to earn through writing, I am tempted everyday. I want to raise my expectations from my blog. I want to raise my expectations from a solitary talent called writing. I want to do this everyday and every minute. But am I good enough? I fear for my destiny. I fear the unknown. I fear that I may lose all that I possess. My possessions matter. They’re there from sheer hard work. Day in and day out of doing something I hate from the core of my heart. Nothing I do during my day makes any sense. There is no satisfaction.
I want to earn more money. I want to rise higher. I want to see the world. I want peace. I want no expectations. But how do I say it – I can never rid myself from temptations, for I’m human. I’ll fall and rise. And it’s my expectations from my life, that make me brave these everyday storms to remain standing tall and writing about them, talking about them, and sometimes even laughing about them.
The only way I see that I can escape expectations is to let go – let go off the people who hold us back. Let go off the material that binds us to temptation. I may attain peace, but then isn’t even peace an expectation? Isn’t peace taxed?
P.S. – This is the hardest prompt I’ve ever tried! I can really go on and on about it, like write series but it may get so depressing that you won’t read beyond the second half of the second edition itself.
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