Random...

Are you someone who confuses 'Empathy' with 'Sympathy' too? I am someone who has worked hard at making myself understand the difference between the two...I don't always succeed but I try. Where am I going with this? Wait a bit... Those of us in Kerala recently woke up to the news of a young lady Banker who commited suicide within her workplace. People speculated as is usual. The debates took a new turn when a note penned by a senior representative of a Bank Employees Union spoke about increasing work stress and a new,target oriented work culture that was evolving within the banking sector. Soon, the note became 'viral' thanks to social media. As is always the case, when one view point gets popular, someone twiddling her/ his thumb over a smartphone elsewhere thinks up an opposing view point. 'We work to live and not the other way round. Every work has its associated work pressure, if one cannot handle that then one should be considered a misfit'...and so and so forth went the 'opinion'. This, somehow, reminded me of an incident that happened in my life when the 'Me too' movement had just started and people were shooting opinions both for and against. Someone close to me, whatsapped a personal forward. It was an opinion piece by a super senior lady doctor, born into a previleged family (upper class plus moneyed, deadly combination and protective factor). She had claimed that the 'Me too' movement was a farce propogated by women who used their sex to get favours and then when the time was right, called foul. She went onto state that she, during her 'illustrious' career never had to face unwanted advances from her male colleagues. She further claimed, it is totally the woman's charector that determines if she is subject to unwanted male advance. I went ballistic reading this. Now, the parallel I see in these two seemingly unconnected incidents is this. Both, the senior lady doctor as well as the person who declared if you cant take the stress, leave the job, speak from the same platform. That protected, hoodwinked platform that does not realise 'Choice' is not a luxury available to all. It is the same when you look at someone who stays in an abusive relationship and proclaim, 'If it were I, I would've walked out'. That is exactly the point. That person is Not you. Neither is that lady Bank Manager who passed on. Neither are the countless women who kept quiet for years before they found their voice. Just remembered this quote by an anonymous author, I'd read a while ago, "You know my name, not my story. You've heard what I've done, not what I've been through..."