When we are growing up, we rarely analyze our own personalities. Often we are told how we are and we just start to believe that. Often times if what we are told doesn’t sit well with us we get upset and angry, thinking that the person whose opinion that is is just being mean.
So where do we really get our natures from? From my analysis, we learn from the people who we surround ourselves with. Our parents, our siblings, our friends. We don’t even realize it but our mannerism are shaped by watching our parents whether we like it or not. We also learn from what we are told about ourselves in comparison to others or just from expectations we meet or don’t meet.
Then we go to school and teachers and peers shape us. We are either natural leaders and are constantly bossing others around or natural followers, trying to mimic whoever strikes our fancy. It can even be a teacher. Some of us are neither, we just pave our own paths and take a little from others and create a little of our own way. Often with time if we are given confidence to bloom, our journey shapes us and the real us emerges and if we are fortunate enough to keep learning, we still keep working on this real self to better the final version.
The word that sticks with me, often times as a prick on my side, is ‘Practical’. I am too practical. Which generally translates into: heartless. I was always expected to play the role of the ‘son’ in a family that already had 2 sons. I was the one who had to drop my life and take the next flight out to support the sister giving birth or the one getting a divorce. Or the parent who wanted to get something done. One would think that if I was asked to do these things and I was the known ‘practical person’ aka ‘heartless person’, then they would expect practicality from me.
For example if I want help from a creative person I would expect creativity and from an empathetic person, I would expect empathy and support, and therefore I would not really get upset if they gave me that and things didn’t work out. But in my case when I did practical things people were not too happy at times. Especially if their situation didn’t improve.
So when my father said I was the practical daughter, even though he said it in a good way, always relying on me to give the practical solid advice, I usually flinched. It made me feel that I was heartless. That because he couldn’t see my heart and the pain it often carried due to the words of generalization, he didn’t think I had one.
Now when my mother and sisters tell me he visits them in their dreams and I haven’t seen him yet, I often think: He probably thinks they miss him more, need to see him more and I, the practical daughter, am happy and content without his presence and so I don’t really need to see him.
As I look outside my window every night, waiting for a miracle – that maybe I will get some sign, I go to bed thinking: why would I ? I am the practical person who doesn’t really need it, right?
The Saudi Expat 