There comes a point in many people’s lives when they simply stop caring what others think.

I reached that point many years ago and it was a strangely exhilarating experience. I found that once you stop needing other people’s approval it is very liberating. However, there are those who never reach that point and spend their lives feeling frustrated and trapped in the cage they have put themselves in. They are living their life the way society wants them to because, frankly, sometimes it is easier to simply bow your head and conform than to be yourself.

Of course, if you do choose to give a two-fingered salute to what in Maltese we like to call “in-nies”, you will have to be prepared to have social opprobrium heaped on your head, and you may even have to put up with scornful looks. But hey, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, right? The world does not fall apart, and eventually everyone moves on. Your little drama is soon forgotten and society will soon find something else to tut-tut about.

Bear with me, there is a point to this preamble.

Lately, I found myself thinking that when it comes to the “hot” issues, which crop up in this country, there is a common theme. People want to tell others how they should live their life. Think about it... politics, religion, lifestyle choices. There always seems to be a wagging finger somewhere telling you that you are stupid/ wrong/immoral and so on. This omnipresence, which feels it knows best for everyone else, is the antithesis of “live and let live”. It’s more like “live the way I want you to live because I’m right and everyone else is wrong”.

We’re going to the chapel

Now I’m not going to bore you with yet more talk about divorce. I think we have had enough of all the “for” and “against” arguments already. But don’t you find it preposterous when people say (in self-righteous tones): “If divorce is introduced, I’m afraid it will be abused.”

Huh? Huh? And again –Huh?

First of all, who is going to define what qualifies as “abuse”? And, if we are going to go down that route, maybe we should first take a cold, hard look at the way the institution of marriage is being abused. It seems to me that it is marriage that is being treated frivolously.

Maybe we should change the marriage vows to something like “I take this woman...until she bores the heck out of me and something better comes along.” Or, “I take this man...until I get fed up of washing his dirty socks.” Or perhaps, “I promise to have and to hold you... until I wake up one day to realise that it’s not really marriage I wanted but the chance to live in my own flat, away from my parents.”

I sometimes get the impression that people use marriage as a stepping-stone to freedom. I can just hear married people laughing their heads off as I write that.

The problem is that there is too much social pressure to get married, punto e basta. If you are 25 and not married, people start raising their eyebrows. If you are 30 and unwed, relatives look at you with pity at family weddings. And if you’ve hit 35 then they’ve given up on you altogether and the gossipy speculation begins (“what’s wrong with him/her? Gay/lesbian? Not quite right in the head?”).

I’m not advocating living together – that is for the individual couple to decide. I’m just saying that people seem to be tying the knot when what they really want is independence. But in a country where a young woman going off to live on her own is still frowned upon, the usual escape route from the parental home still seems to be marriage.

Getting your own flat after the age of 18 is normal in other countries, but parents here still tend to conjure up all sorts of decadent scenarios of what their little girl wants to get up to, when all she really wants is, to paraphrase the famous feminist title, a room of her own.

I want to be free

I know that’s what I yearned for in my early 20s, just a place of my own where I wouldn’t have to answer to anyone about where I was going or how late I’ve been. I remember that at the time, the phrase I used most often with my mother was “leave me alone”. Now that our relationship has vastly improved and taken on a new dimension, we look back and laugh at our little squabbles. But at the time I wanted my independence, which is quite natural and healthy at that age. After all, even birds fly the coop.

When women use marriage to flee the grip of parental control, they often land themselves in the proverbial frying pan. Instead of their father telling them what to do, they now find themselves with a husband who tells them what to do. Of course this also happens the other way round when a man tries to get away from his nagging mother, only to discover he is married to a nagging mother-wife. While marriage should be a partnership, too often it ends being a stamp on the forehead that proclaims “This person is now my property and I can tell them what to do.”

When I go out without my partner, it never fails to astound me when someone asks, “you mean he lets you go out on your own?”

Lets me!?

What is he, my father? What am I, his possession?

It is these things that give me a migraine.

What a gift

This brings me to the Gift of Life proposal, which, I feel, is not really about the abortion issue at all. Abortion is illegal in Malta. Maltese women have been going abroad to use the services of abortion clinics for years. So, what are we talking about here?

The GOL proposal to entrench an anti-abortion clause in the Constitution saying that life begins at conception is an attempt by the religious right to ram its values and beliefs down our collective throats. If it goes through, it will set an alarming precedent where the line between Church and State will become even more blurred. No wonder the real implications have alerted the attention of liberal thinkers who have been vociferous in their protest against this proposal.

Don’t blame us for calling this religious fundamentalism similar to the Taliban who forced women to wear burkas in Afghanistan. How is that any different from the man who suggested Maltese women should be tested to check if they are still pregnant when they come back from abroad?

Fundamentalism is not restricted to Muslims, you know.

I’m not even very comfortable with the fact that the Roman Catholic faith is listed in the Constitution as Malta’s official religion. How can someone decide what an entire population should believe in? The number of practising Catholics is in decline and people who profess to be Catholic, and yet break the commandments on a regular basis, is increasing. I would hazard a guess that many of those Maltese women who have had an abortion were born, baptised and raised as Catholics, complete with the obligatory Church wedding...and yet?

The social mores of this country have to do with the tradition and culture stemming from centuries of influence by the Church, but they are not the laws of the land. The Constitution, which deals with the governance of Malta as a State, should not be meddled with by people who are on some kind of moral crusade in defence of all our souls.

Surely they should be more worried about their own conscience? Or have they never done anything morally wrong in their life? There are just too many people ready to judge and condemn and point fingers and, unfortunately, they seem to be the ones making the most noise. The liberals are a bit more low-key but that doesn’t mean this faction is not growing. The only problem is if the religious right succeeds in portraying its causes as the ones with the largest national support and that they have the unalienable right to speak for “the Maltese”.

Well, I for one, can vouch that they don’t speak for me... do they speak for you?

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