Love is above all relationships and all spirits combined. It is a gift of the Divine, a blessing, the most beautiful of all feelings and is blind to all differences of cast, creed and color. This is a true Godly attribute.
But, hang on! Love can also be confused with infatuation and desperation, especially by our younger generation, who are not taught adequately about physical education and having a friend from the opposite gender is considered a taboo for them. Therefore, when they do find a person from the opposite gender who cares for them, they often mistake it for love, leading to their suppressed desires taking the form of sheer desperation. On top of this, when that love is unrequited or is hindered by external issues, it becomes a “do or die” situation for them and often, suicide seems like the only viable option.
Yes, you got me right. I am talking about the grave incident which happened on Tuesday morning in a local school of Karachi. Two teenagers were so lost in their extreme love affair that they found suicide as the only solution for eternal peace and to have a happily ever after.
Not only this, these love birds also left suicide notes addressed to their families listing the reason (how their families would have never allowed them to marry each other) and the only way out for them from this sinking feeling of never being together was suicide.
A normal person upon hearing this news will not even take a second to scrutinize media and will accuse it as the real culprit. Why? Because it is due to them that young minds get polluted by this utter nonsense of love and suicide. This would be a very common reaction, but are we pointing out and blaming the right problem? Is media really the root cause of such extreme act?
No, it is not!
The actual problem lies with inadequate upbringing and “everything is a taboo” mindset. Media comes much later. Our children learn, what we teach them. They see the whole world through our eyes in the early years of their life. What gets imprinted on the minds of kids in their early life leaves a great impact on the personality of the child.
It is because of our parents that media teaches children about the so-called tabooed things in an “inappropriate” way because today’s parents are incapable of explaining things like love, sex and suicide to their kids, due to their busy time schedule or perhaps because they take it for granted.
It also depends on the psychology of a child. We can’t label 21st century as an era of technology where there is no place of a spirit like true love. Where there are no people like Heer Ranjha, Laila Majnu or Romeo and Juliet. This is a wrong approach which drives young minds to become the first true lovers of the 21st century. They start relating their lives with the lives of the ancient lovers and find exceptional similarities with them and when the two souls of the same mindset find each other then they indulge in feeling of infatuation which to them is love and the only way of being together is death. It would sound absurd and dramatic but it is true.
What we adults do not take seriously is sometime a matter of life and death for youngsters – especially teenagers. Our non-serious approach in such serious matters leads us to this kind of consequences.
After this incident of the suicide of two teenagers, we are left with bundle of questions. Is young love murderous? Does this feeling in youngsters have no future? Are the youngsters full of insanity or are the parents not doing their job right? Do lovers after suicide actually have a happily ever after?
There are a lot of psychological aspects underlining this suicide. We, as parents and guardians, should be wise enough to understand what our duties are and what red signals we should be wary of.
About the author: Mehak Irshad is an aspiring media and communication professional. She is an undergraduate student studying Media Sciences who has currently moved from Lahore to Karachi in search of new opportunities. She tweets at @mehak_irshad.