Step out of my damn oxygen tube!

There is this famous joke that a Sardar visits Chinese friend dying in hospital. The dying man
mumbles something in Chinese and dies.  So the Sardar goes to china to find the meaning of friend’s last words and was petrified to hear what it meant – ‘U R STANDNG ON OXYGEN TUBE!’

With no offence to the Sardarjis (the whole world knows that they are definitely smarter than the rest of the Indians), this means he killed his friend because he wasn’t aware of the fact that he was standing on the oxygen tube and more importantly because he didn’t understand what the Chinese man was saying.

I did some thinking on this and wondered how many oxygen tubes I have stood on myself. Well, not literally cuz I hardly visit people at the hospital (not cuz I care any less, but cuz the ones who are close enough are never in the hospital – TOUCH WOOD!) But yeah! In my opinion, not giving someone the space to breathe, and by tightening your grip onto that person, you are in one way or the other choking that person out.

I have this friend, a sweet girl whom I met at college and was really attached to her. Till date, I haven’t found someone to replace her in my life… And she has this amazing knack of finding where trouble is and going and landing JUST RIGHT THERE – PLOP! I was someone who was pretty raucous with anyone who troubled her and as a loyal friend, I kept helping her out. As I was doing this, I also wanted to save her from trouble that was coming in and I got myself involved too much in her life. I wanted her to do what I said and wanted her to be as FAAAAR away from trouble as she can.

It was one profound conversation at the entrance of her hostel and over a bar of Twix, that I was made to understand how easy it was to keep dictating to another person and how difficult it was to follow. More difficult, when you like the person and don’t want him/her to feel upset. When you say something, it is okay cuz the other party still has the right to refuse and walk on…  But when you impose, just cuz you care, it becomes unbearable somewhere down the line. Guess what? God gave each of us a life so that we could live ours and not someone else’s.

Imagine every time you impose your thoughts, ideas or dos and don’ts on someone else, you are sort of stepping on their oxygen tube, thereby choking them. Sometimes they would say that they aren’t very pleased with it (just like the Chinese mumbling) and you wouldn’t even care to understand until the relationship has ended and sometimes they wouldn’t even say it but break away. Quite rarely there are these specimens who would really want to please the imposer and very sweetly obey – ah ah not for too long before they break away too.

In any relationship – be it with parents and children, husband and wife, even between friends, it is extremely important to hold them like we would hold water in our hand: neither too tight nor too loose, for it would flow away either ways. Hold them with care and protect them with all that you can. And that helps to keep good relationships and great friends. My baby sister is one of those morons who is actually very affectionate but often comes out to be this arrogant shrew. Her problem was that she cared too much and wanted the whole world to listen to her words and act on it. She never gave anyone the credit for their own intelligence in whatever li’l brain that they had J She was the Miss.GENIUS and Miss.RIGHT all the time. Not long after she started to live away from home did she realize all her flaws. Well even now, she hasn’t totally changed but has quite noticeably reformed. And surely, she does realize that she has far more friends now, than ever in her life…

I grew up studying Robert Frost’s “Good Fences make Good neighbors,” and I would like to reflect my thoughts on the same too. It is not literally the fence but knowing your limit. Just as we take this chalk and draw a clear line when someone is crossing their limits with us, it is also important that we do not cross someone else’s fence. You may have the intention of just passing a comment or a compliment but would be mistaken to have said something offensive. There was this colleague of mine who pointed out that I should probably apply a lighter eye liner because I have bright eyes and I was thinking, wow – bright eyes! But maybe if I was this crooked moron I could have also taken offence to it – why would she have to make comments on my face make-up, without even realizing that it was a tip to get myself look better and definitely not worse. As much as it depends on the tone in which it is said, it equally depends on the person at the receiving end to also take it the way they want. After all, you judge people with the way you are and not the way they are…

Right now, I am at this point where I carefully look around to see which oxygen tube I am likely to step on and stop myself from the biggest mistake that many women do – word vomit. I try consciously not to hurt anyone or embarrass anyone through my imposition (funny that the word is used in school for punishing a child) and clearly aim at making more friends and form stronger relationships with people I already know…

Thank you and I do hope you enjoyed reading my blog

Please do let me know the impact of this blog on you by leaving a comment…

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