From the times I remember, one of the guiding light for me on judging what is good and bad has been about,
I am below the mean or above it ?
The mean is the popular belief or accepted norm by the society around me/relatives etc., It took several decades (surely more than two), lots of great friends, books to understand that, judgement of such sort on right Vs wrong, worth Vs not-worth was only stupidity. Now, when I start looking around and look-back into past, the only analogy that comes to my mind is that, who puts that load on your head ? Is that your conscious choice OR society decides and puts that on you..
Making my argument more simpler, how do you make crucial personal, family or career decisions ? Is that our inner deliberation or external factors like peers, relatives and popularity. For eg: Should I send my kid to a CBSE school, Montessori or HomeSchool him ? I tend to believe that 6 or 7 out of 10 of us decide based on what our neighbours do or relatives say than understand the topic deeply and remove any factor of peer pressure or popularity in making that decision. I am not just saying that reading up on the topic is significantly better than verbal opinions but deeper read and eliminating the boxes (peer pressure) from our heads will do us and our kids a world of good. Often, I see the boxes we virtually carry as the Pic here. We carry those boxes so unknowingly that we never realize and also these boxes literally hide our body and face that we don't have a identity and only those boxes show-up, for us,
Contrary to that situation, if we were to carefully pick and chose which boxes to pick and align those boxes (Decisions and actions) to what we fundamentally believe, we exhibit our identity and don't succumb to societal pressure pressure. The pressure of needing to be above mean is so high that, if we go to a new social setting, we are forced to carry these BIG/NEW boxes, we never cared or even knew before. What I mean by that : Assume, we go a house warming ceremony of a relative and see their new big bungalow or their Benz and starting feeling that you are below the mean and chase that new burden, which was never your independent need or want. Imagine the boxes your are signing up to carry on your head !!
Epilogue: It is not easy to live life completely by our own norms and terms. However, the hope should be to head in that direction. Being free of peer, social or financial pressures is so liberating and one doesn't need to carry the boxes on their way and at a colleagues home or at a Mall.
This brief write-up is inspired by a great soul and a dear friend, who lived life that way and became a martyr and a role-model to many of us. Read more about Malli here.
I am below the mean or above it ?
The mean is the popular belief or accepted norm by the society around me/relatives etc., It took several decades (surely more than two), lots of great friends, books to understand that, judgement of such sort on right Vs wrong, worth Vs not-worth was only stupidity. Now, when I start looking around and look-back into past, the only analogy that comes to my mind is that, who puts that load on your head ? Is that your conscious choice OR society decides and puts that on you..
Making my argument more simpler, how do you make crucial personal, family or career decisions ? Is that our inner deliberation or external factors like peers, relatives and popularity. For eg: Should I send my kid to a CBSE school, Montessori or HomeSchool him ? I tend to believe that 6 or 7 out of 10 of us decide based on what our neighbours do or relatives say than understand the topic deeply and remove any factor of peer pressure or popularity in making that decision. I am not just saying that reading up on the topic is significantly better than verbal opinions but deeper read and eliminating the boxes (peer pressure) from our heads will do us and our kids a world of good. Often, I see the boxes we virtually carry as the Pic here. We carry those boxes so unknowingly that we never realize and also these boxes literally hide our body and face that we don't have a identity and only those boxes show-up, for us,
Contrary to that situation, if we were to carefully pick and chose which boxes to pick and align those boxes (Decisions and actions) to what we fundamentally believe, we exhibit our identity and don't succumb to societal pressure pressure. The pressure of needing to be above mean is so high that, if we go to a new social setting, we are forced to carry these BIG/NEW boxes, we never cared or even knew before. What I mean by that : Assume, we go a house warming ceremony of a relative and see their new big bungalow or their Benz and starting feeling that you are below the mean and chase that new burden, which was never your independent need or want. Imagine the boxes your are signing up to carry on your head !!Epilogue: It is not easy to live life completely by our own norms and terms. However, the hope should be to head in that direction. Being free of peer, social or financial pressures is so liberating and one doesn't need to carry the boxes on their way and at a colleagues home or at a Mall.
This brief write-up is inspired by a great soul and a dear friend, who lived life that way and became a martyr and a role-model to many of us. Read more about Malli here.
