One of the biggest challenges we face in our bid to get accepted as individuals is the desire to impress people around us. This challenge is not a product of the New Age. It has been here with us from the cradle of civilization. It is rooted in the basic problem of self-esteem. Funny enough, until you really accept who you are, you will continue to seek for acceptance from others and in the process, you will do crazy things, I mean really crazy things to get accepted. The result has not always been a happy-ending story. Frustration, restlessness and failure have attended such attempts over the ages. Most people tired of trying to impress others ended up in suicide. It’s that bad. This is the reason why I decided long ago never to live my life to please anyone.
There are certain unwritten codes and rules that people gravitate towards which has never been result-oriented. Someone buys a particular brand of car and may be, just maybe, he is associated with another friend who drives the same brand; you then want to buy that same kind of car so you can fit into that clique just because you are also associated with them. You might not have the financial muscle to foot the bill of maintaining and servicing that car, but you are so driven by the desire to impress that you throw caution to the wind and buy the car anyway. You don’t really care if that expense will put you in the minus – all you care is for people to see that you belong to a particular class, clique and social status.
This craze to please others breeds insincerity and falsehood. I find a girl I like to go out with and rather than be my true self and get friendly with her, I wind up pretending to be someone I am not. After getting her to agree to a date, I go rent a limousine to pick her up from her residence, call the restaurant ahead of time to give me some special treatment when I arrive with her, like asking the guys at the door to open the door specially for me and my guest; get me an exclusive table outside of the normal one and get treated like a VIP. At the end of the evening, I might have succeeded in making my date feel she is in with some special person with so much money, but I have only shot myself in the foot. By the time she finds out I am not who I claimed to be, the relationship that should have been built on truth and sincerity would crash like packs of cards with so much bad blood.
Many ladies have ended up with so much regrets because they pretended to be who they were not. Families have run aground because they wanted to be like other families. A wife bought a new set of furniture on hirer purchase because she was scheduled to host some friends of hers on a particular weekend meeting which was supposed to last only 2 hours. By the time the meeting was over, no one commended her for the new furniture but she had put the family in red financially. She wanted her friends to know that her house was some kind of special place. The question I kept asking was “to what end was such an action?”
My life is not subject to some warped understanding of success crafted by a society that is yet grappling with where it’s going. I see people getting married and running into indebtedness to foot the bill of the wedding ceremonies. My experience reveals that one hour after most wedding receptions, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, most of the invited guests never spare a thought for the couple’s well-being. Ask them about the wedding and you hear statements like “ah! That wedding was cool”, or “those guys weren’t really prepared… can you imagine, I didn’t even taste anything at the reception; couldn’t they have postponed the wedding until they were prepared?” These are the people you seek to impress!
Your life is totally your business. What you do with it is up to you. Why should you impress people who don’t even care about you? My house is mine and I don’t need to make you like it. I like my car the way it is because I am the one who drives it and you must not ride in it with me if you don’t like it. My job is not for people to like me but to do what I know is right within the context of my assignment and purpose on this planet. Learn to die to public opinion. We should talk more about this some other time. Keep your comments coming.
No comments:
Post a Comment