Are you open-minded?
A few days back, i would have answered a very emphatic yes. Only that now i don’t feel that i would be truthful to myself if i said yes. I would like to believe that i am open-minded but then this is a very subjective measure.
A few days back, a really really close friend of mine confided his love story in me. He believes that his girlfriend was the one for him and he could never find someone more compatible. The only glitch was that he is a Christian while the girl is a Hindu . Now that’s not very revolutionary but personally I’ve never seen anyone close to me marry outside the caste.. forget religion. His parents are totally against the very idea and are not even willing to discuss the whole issue. I can see that they are being practical because there are a lot of repercussions to breaking established norms. But then aren’t some things worth fighting for?
Understandably my friend was very agitated and was even considering eloping with his girl. Now i was quick to point out that his parents are not very open-minded. But then when I took time out and calmly thought about it from their point of view, I realized that this is a giant deal for them. You could be all romantic and idealistic about it but at the end of the day you are only pretending to ignore the huge elephant in the room.
You might be open-minded but then there is always a boundary to your open-mindedness. A limit exists somewhere and you are only as open-minded as the radii of that circle of belief. Personally speaking, i’ll throw up at the very thought of eating live animals but then a lot of Chinese eat live squids. Not really the hard hitting kind of example? Ok just imagine if your kid came to you a few years down the line and says he wants to marry his lover. Now how open-minded are you? Makes me squirm because I don’t find myself all that open-minded now. Maybe that’s exactly how it makes my friends parents feel! I guess we just need to continually keep widening that circle.
