Rules for parents and children

A couple from Saudi Arabia got into an argument about the name of their newly born child so much that they ended up getting divorced. The father wanted to name the child after his own, recently deceased father, whereas the mother had exactly the same in mind and had already made a promise to her father.

Friends and relatvies tried to conciliate in vain - the divorce was carried out 48 hours after the birth. A national survey recently showed that the divorce rate in Saudi Arabia and the Arab states of the gulf is the highest in the world.

Some of the worst things in the world have happened and will happen in the name of tradition and family. I have already pointed out honour killings and other family-related issues. To me it's still hard to understand how people are so bound by their family that they destroy their current life, consisting of a partner or, as in this case, already their OWN family. Here in the west, it seems to be a very hard to imagine scenario. People here usually feel that they have their own life, and it's part of our way of life to follow our own "pursuit of happiness". If parents disagree, we tend to break bridges with them and feel good about it because we did the right thing. It's unthinkable to give up things that matter to us because of our parents.

The idea behind it is that the parents are a generation of their own. They HAD their good times. They HAD their life with us, it's THEM who decided to put us into this world without asking us, and only put us into this world for the sake of feeling happy themselves. They HAD their time, they HAD their 60s or 70s music that is so "out" after all these years. And most of all, they have each other and that's how they belong to each other, and for us it's time to find someone to belong to. Parents and their children are not supposed to share all their lives together and always agree with each other. Children have to become adults and do their OWN thing.

I think I will go through this drama too. In fact, I am going through it already and have been for a long time, but there is still a lot to come. I am tired of thinking about my parents' mistakes, and I don't feel responsible for them in any way. They have their own stuff to deal with and one day I will be gone and they can take care of themselves. I will not make promises to my parents or argue with my partner because of something my parents say. If my mum says "your girlfriend should [insert suggestion or critisism]", I don't get involved with that. Then I say to her she should rather come up with it towards her and I don't want to deal with it. I don't do stuff just because I get feedback from everywhere.

These idiots from the arabic states (this does not mean that all of them are idiots) should learn this rule:

1. You are responsible for yourself and make your own decisions, so you come first (it has nothing to do with egoism)

2. The person you are going to spend the most time of your life with has to come right after that, and not your parents who are going to die when you are only halfway through life.

3. If you choose to live according to the rules of your family, you live with the consequences. When they are already dead and you wasted all your chances to become happy, you are the one suffering, they already rest in peace.

4. If you decide to get a child, act responsibly! Because as soon as the child is there, the child has to come first - you put it into this world, you have to feed it and raise it.

5. If you are a parent of an adult child, LET GO! You HAD your time. You know what it was like when you were that age. Accept that your child has a right to live a life of one's own. If you didn't want to give up control then you should not have made a child.... bastard!

Argh.... I wish I could just beat up the whole world sometimes... well, in fact, not the whole world. Ugh... it's so sad when prejudices are confirmed so often.

Stone age people

Another massacre happened. The first thing I did when I read the headline was just laugh, because it said "the massacre of the Celebis shocks Turkey". Well, Celebi is a Pokemon. What's wrong with Turkey? They have so much Batman, Celebi, whatever else that has to do with stuff that you only see on the screen.

Anyway, it's a sad topic nevertheless. The only thing I don't really understand is why it's always the Turkish people who go crazy like that. I'm not saying that Germans never do that. It happens. And especially in school massacres, it's almost always Germans. Reminds me of what my brother said to his classmates:" Be careful, school shooters are friendly and quiet, I might turn out to be one of them". And they answered:"No... you're not friendly". Haha.

Okay, back to the topic. I think something is seriously wrong with the Turkish people. Here in Germany, when there are family-related homicides/killings/murders, it's so often people with Turkish background that it is significant. The problem is a mixture of culture, religion and tradition. You cannot get around that. Just take a place on earth where people are so strict they always follow the same traditional, religion-based rules for many, many years. These people are so bound by the traditions and rules that it causes a lot of dissatisfaction. In some way, they do not progress into a civilised community. If there were no more effective ways of killing people, they would still throw stones at each other.
This massacre happened because a man wanted to marry a woman, but the woman's father said no. It's as simple as that. If there was a woman's freedom of choice, it would have been only the woman who had been killed. But if there had not been any stupid traditions at all, nobody would have been killed anyway.

I just don't get it. This whole idea that you can just punish anyone to death who doesn't share someone else's opinion is just so deep in their culture and religion. I wish I could say it differently because I'm a big friend of people. I strongly encourage everyone to be individual and I am for respect among people of all different backgrounds. But it would be naive to just accept everything as "different culture" or "different religion". That's the problem nowadays. You can not be politically correct and at the same time fight for equality among people, justice, fairness, whatever. These things exclude each other.

Somehow it's also strange that these things happen in Turkey. Because this country did at least some things right. It is one of only few islamic countries that are strictly secular. State and religion are two things, although they assume you are muslim unless you tell them otherwise. And of course there are disadvantages for christians, etc. But at least they understood something.

Well... I'm not sure if anything is going to change. It might as well go on like that in some countries. Resistance against change is a great source of evil sometimes. We should know better, but we don't... or maybe they don't. I'm just glad as long as I don't come across people in my country where the boyfriend says "don't look at my woman" if I only serve her in customer service etc.