I was just scrolling though instagram and I read a post where someone was exuberantly praising their mother. I am going to say something real here. We all have parents. According to society and many religions we are suppose to love them. But it’s not always possible.

Firstly, I do not come from the mind set where being brought into this world is something to be lauded. The world is a crazy place. It’s filled with angst of living right from the get-go. Sure, it has love and beauty, but the hate and the ugliness over powers the former most times. I understand all the copious ideologies that talk of light overcoming dark. Pick up movies, books, education, theology, and they will talk about the reason-to-be and why light is better than the dark. I don’t think either is better. They’re the same. Birth isn’t better than death. And being isn’t better than non-being. The best questions Shakespeare asked were in Hamlet’s famous soliloquy.

Parents then aren’t meant to commemorated. Loved surely. All living beings need love and should be. That’s the point of life actually. But loved blindly just because of blood ties. Na. Any woman who works hard and gives her children the best life she can give them should be loved. But not celebrated, the choice of being a parent was hers. So the duty of being a good one isn’t anyone else’s but hers. Therefore, the duty she has taken on becomes the judge of her parenthood. Not the children. The children haven’t chosen her to be their mother. So they aren’t in any way responsible for her as adults. It’s love that makes them responsible. Not duty.

I speak from personal experience and so I shall also talk about things when they go wrong. When you have a father who isn’t capable of love or parenthood but capable of reproduction and does, you’re also in some deep shit. The idea of respecting a person who falls in his duty is preposterous. Krishna himself said this to Arjun at the brink of a war. When the people who create culture fail to uphold it there is a collapse of society. We do not live in the wild, where animals stay with their parents up to a point and then don’t bother if the parents are old enough to care for themselves or not. We live in a culture that has created these rules. If an animal is a bad parent, the child dies, here society prevents that from happening. And thus, pathologies develop. Serial killers go on rampages. The idea of duty becomes the benchmark for everyone.

I live with anxiety and depression created by an abusive father and fear of the world created by an over protective mother. Yet, I function in society because that is my duty- which I never asked for. Essentially, I should love being who I am. But I do not. I have made my peace with it. As such, I have made peace with the fact that parents are human beings who are capable of disastrous mistakes. They are to be loved, yes, but worshipped, no.

I had aunts who cared for me like they were my parents. One of them filled the place of my father. Strong, supportive and loving. She did more for me than my father ever did. It was not her duty to do so. She had not given birth to me. But she loved me like I was her own. Some say, that was because she did not have children of her own, but that doesn’t mean she did not love me. That only meant that her duty would have been to her own children first. And I would not expect any less of that. But would she have loved me less? I do not think so. Irrespective, of that digression, I will just reinstate that motherhood or fatherhood or parenthood, itself, is created by love. If it is a hallmark of duty, it needs not be respected but taken as a matter of life. If it is an act of pure love, it won’t need reciprocation.

No one asks to be born. And as such the one who procreates has a moral obligation towards culture itself to make sure that the offspring contributes to the love needed in the world. Nurture is always more important than nature and that is a parent’s job. Not the child’s. As you grow you can appreciate what your parent has done – but in the sense, of how well they did their duty. Love is a necessary by-product of that duty. And one need never be grateful to be loved.