Happiest man in the world

Today I feel like blogging about something very different. I feel like going off topic. I feel like confessing something that I did not realize was eating my life-like an incurable virus. I feel like I have lived a lie for the greater part of my life. No one ever noticed that there was something wrong with me. Most people know me as the ‘happiest man in the world’ and that is because I am always smiling. I also happen to be someone who talks fast and dominates conversations with others. For that reason I have managed for several years to cover up my affliction that was eating me like maggots on a carcass. I did not know that all that glitters on me was not coming from within. I do not know how I developed this out happy go personality when inside I am a Pandora’s box. I am the kind of person talking about my accomplishments, gifts, talents, privileges and comforts most of the time. In my profession I have pulled out people experiencing wide range of mental health problems. It never occurred to me that I could be carrying mental health problem. No need for clinical diagnosis. However, there is something that made me wake up and realize that I have a serious problem that I have either hidden or masked because of my happy go personality.

I know someone reading this blog may relate to my experience. Someone may self-identify with my experiences and wake up from their slumber like I did. Friends let me be honest and clean. I know I have depression. One day my partner was sharing a fun joke with me. I failed to put up a genuine smile. I could not smile or laugh. I felt empty. I did not pick the humour. Then another day a friend of mine was sharing a fun vacation experience. Again, I was dry. I did not see the fun. I did not laugh. I know I faked interest. My laughter and smile were both forced. Then I thought of the activities that I do with my kids. I seem so keen and interested in their games. However, I realized my mind was not involved. I felt empty inside. The compliments I gave my kids were all fake. I was not feeling genuine warmth and interest inside me. I felt lost inside. I felt a disconnect inside. I felt like being alone all the time. But I never expressed or showed it. I felt like remaining in the house and not doing anything productive. My going to work was forced. My family activities and outdoor events were forced. Then one day I took genuine stock of my feelings. I asked myself  ‘Am I the happiest man in the world?’. I know people familiar with me would think the personality they know is truly the happiest in the world. The answer was a BIG NO. Upon reflection I realized that for the past 21 years of my life I have never been genuinely happy or satisfied with anything. I lost interest in life two decades ago. I have not known true happiness for more than two decades. I had faked a positive demeanour at college, home, work and other areas of life where I was actively involved with others. It was difficult for me to believe that I had lived 21 years of deception. I was surprised that when you lose interest in life, there is no sounding bells to announce that development. It is an invisible dark hand that creeps into your heart and mind. Before you know it you have lost your happiness. Depression is a silent operator that replaces all the right signals with defective signals. I will end here today but I shall continue sharing my struggles with depression although people who know me think that I am ‘the happiest man in the world’.

5/365 some fathers claw back their daughters’ life prospects

 

I live in Toronto. One of the mega cities in the world. Rich in diversity, ethnicity and multiculturalism. I respect values and traditions of all cultures. Each race has its unique culture and values. I accept that diversity is healthy and desirable. I am not a judge of cultures that are different from mine. I do not pretend to know what is good for all girl children. However, sometimes I can not stand it. I find it impossible to keep my brain shut. I feel the strong urge to speak out. Of course I will be targeted for speaking out. I do not see myself giving my back to girls raised without respect of their fundamental rights. A girl child like any other kid has rights. Some cultures needs education in Toronto.

Today I am blogging about cultures that do not celebrate the birth of girl children. I saw birth of girl children go unnoticed. Just because they are girls. I want to shut my lips. My conscience has serious objections. I am judging. Allow me to be a judge just today. I propose to abolish cultures that do not celebrate the birth of  female children. It is not befitting to treat a new life into this world with such indifference. No wonder girls from such cultures have a cat and mouse relationship with their fathers. A heap of negative attitude placed upon innocent girls. Receiving sentence for a crime the girls did not commit. Although a child can not remember what happened when they were born, to me such norms degrade womanhood.

Older girls will eventually learn that girls in the family are not celebrated at birth. Older kids will easily pick the discrimination especially if they compare with the elaborate celebrations that are held when a male child is born. I want to repeat that this problem I did not see several cultures. I know two cultural groups that uphold this practice. I do not know if such a practice is common in other regions of the world. I know in developing countries such discrimination is the fashion of the day. I know sometimes culture makes us blind to injustices and discriminatory behaviour. Culture can be an iron yoke to those who blindly follow it like zealots. Culture needs introspection.  Culture needs to serve the interests of its people. In my opinion, any culture that purposefully avoids celebrating the birth of a child must be abolished. I know families are private entities. These cultural groups probably needs civic education about human rights. To me this is not an issue of culture but human rights violation perpetuated at child birth.I hate to see innocent kids born into divisive and retrogressive norms. Bad culture can be reformed through attitude change. Diminishing the sanctity of the lives of girl children at birth creates a wedge between daughters and fathers. When they grow older they will know the source of discrimination and that their fathers are the perpetrators. In a digital and electronic era where kids are enlightened from multiple sources of data it does not take long for such kids to rebel and this creates friction and infighting. Healthy relationships between daughters and their fathers should be continued at birth having started at the point of conception.

 

4/365 ways some fathers claw back their daughters’ life prospects

Some men are crafty on the issue of gender discrimination. No force on partners to get rid of female fetuses. On the outside they are the modern dad. Open minded. Happy prospective fathers to either gender. Supportive and understanding husbands in the presence of their partners. You would think they are the typical role models for our society. They shower their partners with ‘affection’ and ‘love’. They will run around to source and surround their partners with gifts. They are so smart never to expose their hypocrisy.

Yet inside they cringe. Their heart filled with anger and vile. In their hearts and minds they curse the day they became aware of the child’s gender. Inside their hearts it is an unwritten rule that fatherhood without a male child is null. Their culture requires men to carry over their name and inheritance. To them it is imperative that at least one of the child be male. In private conversations with their peers they swear and curse their partners. They feel betrayed and trapped by marriage. They are so desperate for a male child.

I know of a man who pretended to fondly love his daughters. However, inside he was vicious and burning. Marriage without a male child was not an option in his mind and yet he never publicly acted that way. Deceit was the life he was living. His ‘happiness’ had no roots in him. He was acting along. Every one and half years the wife was pregnant. Nature had it otherwise. daughters kept coming. Thrilled outside. Inside dying. She loved kids and a large family. So her love for kids blinded her to the deceit. Her partner could not stop without hitting the bull’s-eye.

It took 8 attempts for the woman to bear a son. Would it surprise you that the birth of the son marked the end of pregnancies. With the birth of the son the man considered the family large enough. She was too trusting to see into the deceit. This woman was brave. She had complications from pregnancy number 4 but kept sacrificing for the good of the family. Thinking both partners  genuinely wanted large family she had the courage to carry out the family dream.

What really pleased the man was the birth of the male child. I do not want to imagine how many more pregnancies the woman would have been sweet talked into in the name of ‘loving a large family’. I am not against large families. Partners have to make their choices. I am against deceit. I am against exploiting an unsuspecting partner. I am against fake relationships with daughters. Daughters like any other child deserve genuine affection from their fathers.

Being deceitful makes a man fail to recognize that they live in mental slavery . It is a slavery of living with expectations  one will never show to their loved one. They can never openly express their desires which are out of line with modernity. If you are one such man living in deceit, you need professional help. Not only do such an unexpressed desires compromise the father/daughter relationship, but endangers the life of the woman who unknowingly becomes a ‘bearing object’. Fathers and daughters start bonding from the time of conception. If a man has fake bond during pregnancy that falsehood will not stop at the birth of the child. The false relationship will carry into the lives of the daughters. Deceit and pretense is a bad way of starting a life long bond with your daughters.

3/365 Some Fathers Claw Back their Daughters’ Life Prospects

 

I can’t imagine what it feels for a female physician to be instructed to ‘remove a healthy and normal pregnancy for reasons that the fetus is female’. Here is a man in the clinic of a female physician ordering the physician to terminate the life of a prospective female physician. Having the audacity to tell the female physician that her gender is undesirable like disease. I know physicians are bound by their medical ethics to do their job regardless of their personal feelings but I can only imagine what trauma such orders put on female physicians. I know of a story of a female physician who fainted when a prospective father ordered her to immediately remove the ‘bastard’ in his wife’s stomach.

Truly the doctor who had been excited to show the gender of the child to the couple did not expect such a wild response. But again we live in a world where the unexpected is becoming the order of the day. In the story that I heard the doctor was shocked at the virility of accusations leveled against the woman. He blamed his partner for carrying a female fetus even though it was a pregnancy which occurred by natural ways. I can’t imagine how a modern-day man can stand before two grown up women and tell them that their gender is not valued. Here is a man driven by culture and self-interest playing the role of the creator-deciding who lives and who dies. The man was carried for 9 months in the womb of a woman and yet he is against existence of the very woman who gave him the life he has. It pains to think of all the female fetuses who are denied the chance to live and give to the good of humanity. I can imagine what these aborted fetuses could have become had they been allowed to exist.

The wife was put through the indignity of accepting some twisted views from a man who only cares about his interests. There is something wrong with our society when we fail to do something about our beloved brothers caught up in some twisted thinking. Many a times without economic leverage most vulnerable women have to put up with men who clearly do not value their gender. Some of our learned female physicians are at the forefront of championing ‘gender balance’ practices which end up targeting female fetuses. This speaks more about the sickness of our society that even enlightened women do not seem to be aware that by their actions they are fueling the containment of the girl child. In my opinion it is wrong for any man or woman to take part in activities that prevent a gender from existence and contributing to the cause of humanity. As men it is within our power to stop practices that claw back the gains women accomplished in the 21st century.

 

2/365 Some Fathers Claw Back their Daughters’ Life Prospects

“I want only a male child”-the moment you tell your partner that you want or require only a male child you are already spreading the social disease of gender discrimination. I know of many women who love their husbands and marriages and have been patronized into terminating all female fetus pregnancies. Not withstanding the risks involved in the process of abortion, these women have been put through the indignity of aborting normal fetuses for the only reason that the gender is ‘wrong’. I tried to advise a female friend of mine to leave her husband who demanded that she bears only male children but due to cultural obligations she could not master the power to do so. Her own family was more concerned with the sustenance of the marriage than the horror she was being put through by her husband. I can not understand how a man who loves and respects his partner would place such irrational demands on his partner. I do not know how my friend lives with a man who by his actions is telling her that he does not value her gender. I still don’t understand how someone will look into their partner’s eye and tell her ‘honey I love you with all my heart and soul but I hate female kids’. If a man has a negative attitude towards a female fetus how can he  genuinely and sincerely appreciate and an adult female? To me placing such a demand on your partner is insulting the concept of womanhood. It is not only disrespectful to the partner but to his mom and sisters. Men we should grow and stop discriminating against female kids who are as dear as any child can be.

Way # 1: Gender Mentality

If you are a father I would like you to think about the time you planned to have kids. In your mind when you thought of fatherhood what image of child filled your imaginations? Probably you don’t remember and that’s fair enough. Let me share with you what I keep hearing countless times. I have listened to men of different backgrounds share with me their imaginations of fatherhood. Some of the things I listened to made my stomach cringe. I heard what I would like to call the ‘gender mentality’ and this is defined by someone who automatically assumes that their child will be male. As I gave ear to prospective dads I heard things like he will be playing quarterback position, he will beat Sydney Crosby, he will be a renowned Lawyer etc. In my mind I am wondering what makes such men so sure that the child will be a boy. I have no issues with anyone planning to be father dreaming what their child is going to be in life and what I have serious problem with is when men substitute the word ‘child’ with ‘he’. To me such gender mentality is the root of female feticide and girl child discrimination if the fetus is lucky to be let live. The preoccupation with the child’s gender takes away the true joy of parenthood and the principle of child to mean a girl or boy. I have heard conversations where some men if they can not threaten their partner to abort a female fetus, they talk of getting mistresses, finding second wives and faking grounds to initiate divorce proceedings. I wonder how men with such mentality feel about their sisters, mothers and female co-workers. Are these not the type of men perpetuating gender discrimination within families, schools, workplaces and in social gatherings? I would be shocked if such gender mentality men are capable of respecting and treating women as equal human beings. Like I said in my earlier blogs and I must admit there is a lot good fathers out there. I salute and honor such progressive and enlightened 21st century fathers who appreciate that a child is a gift no matter what it’s gender is. However, to those men still possessed with the gender mentality, I will not rest my case until every prospective father appreciates and values the right to existence of every child. I am challenging men with a gender mentality to shake up their social obligations and personal values and become real men who experiences the joy of fatherhood irrespective of the child’s gender. Guys let’s realize that gender discrimination starts in our minds and the imaginations we have of fatherhood when we plan to have kids defines our relationships with our prospective daughters. It all starts with the gender mentality and I want all men to take stock of their first imaginations of fatherhood. If there was any gender preference, you could probably be one of those who unconsciously perpetuate girl child discrimination. I wish all men could define fatherhood in terms of having kids and put an end to the gender mentality. As I continue to blog the ‘365 ways’ watch out for ‘way # 2’ in my next post. Thank you for taking your time to read this blog and together I know we can eliminate the gender mentality from our mindsets.  

365 ways some fathers claw back their daughters’ life prospects

When I started this blog, I pointed out that there are ‘365 ways’ some fathers consciously or unconsciously do that ‘claw back’ the life prospects of their daughters. In the coming posts I will be blogging on each of the ways and the contents of the blogs will reflect my personal views, values and aspirations. My observations should not be taken as a prescription to ideal fatherhood other than personal observations to what can make us better fathers to our female children. I believe that each of these ‘365 ways’ will help some fathers build better relationships with their girl children. Through these ‘365 ways’ some fathers will reflect on how their attitudes, actions and words significantly reduce the life prospects of their daughters. I envision a world where every girl child feels loved, respected and treasured the same way fathers have been treating their male children for several centuries. To me a case involving even one father mistreating their girl child because of her gender is one case too much in the 21st century. Not even one girl child should have to experience any form of discrimination based on her gender and I hope I should be measured on similar standards in how I will raise and relate to my 5 year old daughter. So this is not a case of other fathers but this also includes me in that whatever expectations I have for other fathers I have to fulfill them myself. So my next post with be talking about ‘way # 1’ and I hope you will find each of the observations challenging, provocative and enlightening.

Taking collective stand is the only way we can stop female feticide

Abortion is not the reason I am blogging. I know that there is no universal agreement as to whether a fetus can be defined as a human being. I know too well that some do not consider the fetus human being on the basis that it cannot exist outside the mother’s womb but that is not what I am here to blog about. Whether abortion is legal or illegal, murder or no murder, sin or no sin I am not the one to judge. My goal is to appeal to the conscience of men to accept that every child deserves to live whether it happens to be female or male. Whether you believe in God or not and whether you subscribe to the big bang theory or not the point of my blog is to advocate for the abolition of female feticide. Whatever your objectives are, just the thought of aborting a pregnancy on the basis that the gender is female to me does not sound good. If a couple does not intend to have children and they terminate a pregnancy that ‘accidentally’ happened that is a different story. Here I am talking of a couple who have the objective to have children but upon discovering that the fetus is female the pregnancy gets terminated. I consider a female child an equal child and there is absolutely nothing that a male child has that a female child does not have. To me and my personal values I do not condone any abortion based on the principle that a male child is more desirable and valuable to the family. I usually avoid passing judgement on people’s personal choices but I feel sick to see an emerging pattern where it is becoming fashionable for couples in both developed and the developing world to systematically prevent female fetuses from developing to babies with full rights to live and exist. Whether you prefer to call it ‘family balancing’ or not to me I see this as a concerted effort by some men to deny the girl child the right to existence. I know from my history books that one man tried to eliminate human beings of ‘inferior’ qualities and it took good women and men to take a stand (albeit too late) and defend the right of every human being to live. To me it is history repeating itself here the only difference is that in this case it’s girls that are being systematically denied the right to existence. If you citizens of the world refuse to take a stand (for fear of a backlash) on what I consider onslaught against the survival of the girl child then I am afraid  history is repeating itself. Remember “The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.” Albert Einstein.  

Shocking revelations of more female fetus abortions……why killing the girl child?

Some fathers still believe in the myths that a boy child is more special than the girl child. If you are a father do you think you value your male and female children the same way? Does your culture still dictate to you which gender is more superior? If you were living in those countries with a one child policy, which gender would you prefer to have? Do you know that in those countries with one child policy, statistics are beginning to emerge that more female pregnancies are being aborted in preference of the male child? What does this say about the attitude of some men towards the value and significance of the girl child? Should society sit back while some fathers pressure their wives to abort female fetuses just because they value the male child? Please I beg for an honest dialogue and lets talk…….

Related articles

• Sex Selective Abortion and Missing 100 Million Women (socyberty.com)
• The Shocking Face Of China’s Brutal One Child Policy (newsworldwide.wordpress.com)