Sunday, February 9, 2014

Live to Please Yourself Before Trying to Please Others

People often spend much of their time trying to please others and do not focus enough on making time for themselves. This concept is portrayed by Nora and her husband in the play A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen. Starting with her father when she was younger and then with her husband when she was older, Nora has always lived to please another person.  Nora never found herself because she spent all of her time pleasing the men in her life. Her husband did not treat Nora like a real person, but rather like a doll as Nora put all of her energy in trying to make her husband happy by obeying all of his wishes. Nora focused her whole life on trying to make everyone happy but herself. Once Nora realized that she did not love her husband, she left her family to finally make herself happy, which she neglected to do her whole life.

            My family situation relates very closely to Nora’s. My mother was not happy for the majority of her life and she could never find a way to make herself happy in healthy ways. My mother was very unhappy in her marriage with my father and ended up abandoning her family, leaving my brothers and me alone with our father. My mother spent her whole marriage living to please my father and not herself. She, like Nora, had to leave everything she had known to find who she really was and to make herself happy. Escaping the marriage was the only way Nora and my mother could be free to live to please themselves and not everyone around them.

I believe that before people get married, both partners need to know how to make themselves happy without depending on another person. When in a relationship, both partners need to work on themselves and not live entirely to please the other person. In general situations, people need to spend more time making themselves happy and not spend as much of their time living to please everyone around them.

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