Vigilante Behaviour

Guess, there is always something that strikes a chord when one is watching TV.  One such moment when I was watching CSI NY; an episode titled Vigilante! A rapist is found murdered and the CSI unit is out to investigate if any of his victims is responsible for the murder. Well, the science takes its course and the story reels on as always, for close to an hour. This specific run had moments that referenced the myriad interconnected factors of the content, values and structure of a thought process that reinforce a behaviour that is so prevalent in a modern woman.

Hawkes: We're wasting a whole lot of man hours hunting a killer that should get a medal for doing the community a service. 

Lindsay: There's a body on a slab in Autopsy, Hawkes. 

Hawkes: Yeah, and he beat and raped at least ten women. I'm surprised to hear you defending him. 

Lindsay: Why? Because I'm a woman I should cheer his death? I'm a cop first. As much as I despise what he did, I don't advocate vigilante justice. Come on, Hawkes. You're a doctor. What would you do if Clarke came into your ER? Hawkes: He didn't. He's dead. 

Lindsay: That's a convenient answer. 

I am a cop first, a mom first, a woman first…. a manager first… and this list goes on! And I thought I was an individual / Anuradha first. How do you go about doing your job / roles and still be yourself? I guess this is a question that has so often been posed in countless ways. There is so much of time and effort being spent in being that ‘special’ and ‘perfect’ person at home and at work that one tends to lose out; might I say, perhaps even forget what the essence of herself is. I am not sure if men experience the same. Needless to say, I haven’t been a man and thus wouldn’t have an answer for that. However, as a woman, it has plagued me. And somewhere along in these 4 long decades, I am not sure if I have lost out on the spirit that governs the ME in me. I do hope not.  

Therein lies the rationale of why so many women experience the proverbial ‘glass ceiling’. The show can’t go on forever. It needs to come to a stop at some point and it is at that point when she says ‘enough’ that the glass ceiling materializes. The ability to walk the talk; a dialogue which she has perfected is now at the brink of a menopause. I guess I got tired of ambling that talk. In Lindsay, I saw a struggle that I experienced so many times. The struggle to put the real me in a box in order to go back and do my job. I did the job, as do most of us, in all integrity, at the end shredding a piece of us.  

The essence of a being is in her ability to be herself sans the mask. I don’t need to be a vigilante to deal with the dark forces.