A Boy or A Girl?

As I close my eyes and drift away to a land where there is love, health, peace, and blessings. I wanted to take the time to think and reflect.

     I was taking the time to think about the idea of cultural bias. Its funny how we remember ideas / topics especially when an event or an opinion occurs, but the thing about cultural bias is that we rarely know that we have engaged in this, and continue to act, behave, and think as we normally would. To really understand this concept, we either learn about it, or we have to step in unchartered territories, learn, observe, and see how other cultures think, act, or behave. This is exactly what came to mind when I thought about the idea of girls and boys. In some cultures birth of a particular biological sex is valued more than others. We could think about the South Asian culture, where girls are preferred over boys. We've heard of honor killings, and we have also heard of girls being buried alive, because of the burden that was felt upon the parents. I could even take these thoughts to a personal level, where I came from a family of all girls, one of five sisters to be exact. I remember the sarcastic comments that my mother / father used to receive from relatives who felt that five girls were an enormous burden. I'm grateful that our parents never made us feel this way during childhood. 

     Now as a mother myself of daughters and a son, I think of the hardwork, dedication, and also the rewards that are received from both girls and boys. The experience of motherhood, coupled with the learning of cultural bias, revealed that cultural perceptions / bias are very real. And it is only when we are open to learning new perspectives, adding to our human experience, and growth do we actually really experience growth, attitudinal shifts, thought, and behaviour changes. 

To engage in the practice of diverse thinking, equity, freedom of thought, movement, and live in harmony, we must extend our views of what is culturally right or wrong. Everyone had a valuable contribution to make. Boys, girls or any gender; it takes energy to raise children. Even as we ourselves as adults, and adults who take care of children, need the energy to continue to evolve. 

My thoughts to share with love & kindness! :) 

Notes: These thoughts were originally hand-written on August 1st, 2018.
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