Conforming

After the "Round Town with an Oven" story, I was so ready to get away from my crazy husband, that I took off with my friends to see "Brokeback Mountain."

I don't typically go to Romance movies, but if they happen to be on TV and I switched to the channel at the right time, I'd probably stay on that channel.

There are no spoilers in this post, so if you haven't seen the movie, I promise not to tell you anything you haven't already read in reviews about the movie.

I don't think I'd call this a Romance. Yes, it's about love, and it's about cowboys, and it's about men and their expression of feelings (or lack thereof!). But more than anything I felt that this was about conforming to society's expectations and living up to these expectations. It's about reconciling your true feelings with what you know society expects you to feel.

It's a very tough place to be. I'm living it every day. Being a Jew and an Israeli my friends and family had certain expectations from me. I decided not to conform to society's expectation and went against it. So in a way, I'm living the opposite story of the two cowboys. Yet, I'm not having it any easier than they did. Do I think life would have been easier if I married within my culture and people? Maybe a little easier. But with my curiosity about other cultures and other people I'd probably always feel that I'm missing out on something.

Sometimes I wonder if maybe I shouldn't have married and just lived life for the moment, without conforming to what people perceive as an obvious happy end to any love relationship - marriage. It's not that I don't enjoy being married, but it'd be fun not to be confined to one person for life and get to know other people as well without society judging me about my morals or my non-conforming decisions.

Every society I've lived in or experienced has a certain group of expectations. I can never seem to fit into any one society. I wish I could take one expectation from this group, one from this group, one from this group, and create my own cult. But then I run the risk of being seen as an eccentric by ALL societies. So I'm doomed to a life of conformity. A life of feeling conflicted about what I really WANT to do versus what people expect from me.

Deep down inside, I think everyone suffers the same to one level or another. I strongly doubt that anyone is 100% happy to live a life of conformance, or a life of defiance. Or maybe it's about just being happy and finding things to be happy about and disregarding all the things to be unhappy about.

So what life have you chosen - conformance or defiance?