Image source edited with canva
I think I get much busier in my head than I do outwardly. I mean, I think a lot! I may function and get busy outwardly but inward, my brain is running miles per second and thinking from all directions. Why do I say this? You will understand in a minute.
The issue of privacy came up in an article I read online today and it took me to the past. Have you ever had your privacy breached before? I'm sure we must have faced something like that and you will agree, it is not pleasant.
In this article, the young lady wrote about her overbearing mother who sought to know every tiny detail of her life. From what she eats outside the home to who befriends her in school to who she talks to and who she dates. She was overwhelmed and it gravely affected her relationship with her mother.
This made me realise the importance of privacy. We place much value on privacy because we need it sometimes. We are born individually but need each other to survive. Still, we need our alone time and our own space.
I remember when I kept a diary in my teenage years (I don't anymore). I preferred to write down all my thoughts, some stories, and poems.
Writing them in my journal enabled me to express myself more and address any issue I write about objectively. Then I came home from school one day only to have my mother accost me about some things I knew I did not tell anyone but wrote about in my diary!
I was heartbroken. Why would my mother do this? I'm sure some of us would have experienced this. Why did she feel the need to read my private thoughts knowing they were private? Some mothers may justify it by saying children should not hide things from their parents or it's a way to protect the children and look out for them in case they are going through certain issues that they could not voice out.
Well, I may justify the breach of privacy too, if I was a mother. I'm not sure. But still, I believe everyone is entitled to their privacy. To breach a person's privacy is like a breach of trust. Reading anyone's diary or journal without permission is wrong.
Gabriel García Márquez, an author in her book titled A Life said, "All human beings have three lives: public, private, and secret" and I concur. Much as we like to interact with others and be in public, we also prefer to have our private life and keep certain things a secret.
Privacy is important to us because it empowers us to be ourselves without judgment from the world. In privacy, we can know ourselves more and have the liberty to choose whom to share them with or not to share them at all. Stephen King captured this issue aptly in the book, Hearts in Atlantis thus -
Friends don’t spy; true friendship is about privacy, too.
Everyone is entitled to their privacy, be it a husband or wife or child or parent. We value our privacy when we begin to respect them. The intrusion of a person's privacy is wrong regardless of how close such a person is to us. I cannot just pick my sibling's or friend's journal and read knowing that they had no intention of sharing the information in it with me. The proper thing to do would be to ask for permission or not ask at all.
But then will our curious nature let private matters lie?
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