So, I just saw an adorable movie about a kindred spirit – Catherine Called Birdie on Amazon Prime (surprisingly). Kindred Spirit means – a person whose interests or attitudes are similar to one’s own. She is a fourteen-year-old from Lincoln Shire in London – a long time ago. How on earth can she be my kindred spirit, you ask? Let’s find out.

For one, she is a girl; not only that, and she is a girl who does not want to get married. And it only gets better from there – she detests that men are allowed to do things which girls are not. It does not matter whether girls can do it or not – but the restrictions are the crux of the matter. She writes in her diary, ‘Her life may not amount to much, but at least it’s her own.’ I will not mar the statement with an explanation – if you are a rebel, you know what it means. She lived life her own way – sent away suitors by misbehaving. And when her father finally does find an older man for her as betrothed and is about to leave – her father cannot bear it and duels the man to win his daughter back. We will never know if and who Catherine married, but she brought back memories of a life I lived and still live in some ways.

I will never know if I was born this way or if society made me into a rebel – but I absolutely detest and loathe being told what to do – especially if it is something to do with being a girl. There, I have said it – however childish it may seem – it is still true. The fire still burns strong. Before, I was fighting marriage – the things I did. I refused to learn cooking (which I admit I do regret now). I cut my hair, refused to wear traditional clothes, did engineering, gave terrible poses for marriage photos, and ran away to the US and then the UK to avoid marriage. And in the end, I married but on my own terms. And it happened only when I surrendered to marriage – when I stopped fighting it. And all the while, I lived life on my own terms – the mistakes, successes, failures, laughs, and learning was all me.

As I have grown up, or rather forced to grow up in the cruel world – the rebel in me has learnt to behave in public, at least. After watching Catherine LIVE her life, I wondered – am I living my life? A life where I react to situations, a life where compulsive thinking creates the world I live in, a life where emotions take over, and I act them out. Eckhart Tolle says that his biggest achievement is that he does not think. How wonderful is that? And that’s what I aim for – a NOW when I think as needed, unlike the constant mind chatter. And that is what I am running from now or always have been. Maybe I need to surrender it to first entirely before it leaves me, just like marriage. Just like Catherine made peace by getting married to the vilest man alive. Only when we embrace the vilest thoughts will we be true rebels.

If this blog resonated with you – celebrate because you are a rebel. Do you really know who you are?