What does it mean to live boldly?
To live boldly means owning our lives. It means not giving away the power over our lives to the whims of our parents, spouses and children. It means having the conviction to stand by our choices and live a life that is by our beliefs, even if it goes against the rules dictated by society. This doesn’t mean that we will always be choosing a life of comfort. On the contrary, it can inflict great pain and we will have to continue the journey despite the pain. There might be people who support us during the journey and sometimes we might not find support at all. We would need great strength of character if we want to live boldly.
I have never allowed anyone to decide my life. From childhood onwards, I had the conviction that I am the only person who is best informed about what I want out of my life. This has made me choose paths that went against the wishes of my parents. But I never turned away from facing the consequences of my decisions. As long as I am the owner of those decisions, I am willing to bear any adversities such decisions have on my life. However, I have often found that people want to blame somebody else for the issues that pop up in their lives. Such people never take any decisions of their own and they rely on others so that they can have somebody to blame for their incompetence. I never understood the logic behind this. If it is your life, it is better to be responsible for that life.
As women, it is extremely difficult to have that agency and control over our lives. But it is important that we fight for it and never settle for anything less. There is this quote by Adrienne Rich I always read whenever I am torn about taking a decision that goes against the norm.
“Responsibility to yourself means refusing to let others do your thinking, talking, and naming for you. It means that you do not treat your body as a commodity with which to purchase superficial intimacy or economic security; for our bodies to be treated as objects, our minds are in mortal danger. It means insisting that those to whom you give your friendship and love are able to respect your mind. It means being able to say, with Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre: “I have an inward treasure born with me, which can keep me alive if all the extraneous delights should be withheld or offered only at a price I cannot afford to give. “
Responsibility to yourself means that you don’t fall for shallow and easy solutions — predigested books and ideas, marrying early as an escape from real decisions, getting pregnant as an evasion of already existing problems. It means that you refuse to sell your talents and aspirations short, and this, in turn, means resisting the forces in society which say that women should be nice, play safe, have low professional expectations, drown in love and forget about work, live through others, and stay in the places assigned to us. It means that we insist on a life of meaningful work, insist that work be as meaningful as love and friendship in our lives. It means, therefore, the courage to be “different”. The difference between a life lived actively, and a life of passive drifting and dispersal of energies is an immense difference. Once we begin to feel committed to our lives, responsible to ourselves, we can never again be satisfied with the old, passive way.”
