WTF do you do with ur achievements – This is part 2 of 2 – Kothabriksha

Q – Well what’s wrong with being proud? 

A – nothing. All is good. You feel superior while you really are not…. explained in detail in the last part

Q – then why do I do what I do? What’s the purpose of all this? Is everything futile? 

A – well, your purpose should be known to you. In case you haven’t thought of it yet, give it a thought. Sometimes knowing one’s own self is difficult than knowing others. 
Here is a food for thought 
Biologically we humans need roti (food & water) to survive. Not even kapda (clothing) or makaan (shelter). However we probably have more imagination than other animals and hence we anticipate that hunger will strike us again, we will again need to protect ourselves from extreme weather & that we need to take care of those who are weaker than us. That leads to the concept of proactively planning (farming, collecting, storing/preserving food , building houses, wearing clothes etc.) 

While humankind might have started off with these two simple motives, somewhere that did not remain as simple. We did good, then better than other animals & now probably we are the best in the universe. In the process, the main purpose has got lost somewhere. We are constantly searching for something else, way beyond the original goalpost.

Q: What do you mean by that?

A: to insure against the future insecurities was the objective. We have gone way beyond. That’s great. That’s been an amazing journey. Example – The average age of Indians have gone up from 45 years to 69 years in last 70 years. However are all those people happy living those extra years?

Maybe yes. Maybe no. 
Q: So what are you getting at?

A: In today’s world we all do things to be happy. Happiness is different for all of us. Someone is happy in getting a particular person as girlfriend, someone is happy with a beautiful mansion by the sea, someone is happy drinking single malt, someone is happy donating, someone is happy spending her Sundays teaching tribal children & so on. 
If you are able to figure out what makes you happy, you are sorted. There can be multiple small things. Usually they can be bucketed. You can align your life goals accordingly. You can create your own set of DOs & DONTs. 

Some people are generally happy people. Others aren’t . Being a happy person is not as easy as it sounds, specially if you have been raised unhappy, if you are always doubtful, if you have a hyper competitive mind etc. Being happy involves not thinking ‘I am superior’, letting go of things, not having the compulsion to win every argument, trying to pick your fights rather than exhausting yourself in all potential fights & so on.

Q: So how is this related to what we started discussing – being proud of?

A: Well, it’s great to be happy & thankful about everything we talked about – about your intelligence, beauty, attractiveness, degrees, medals, other achievements etc but is it as good to be ‘proud of’. Feeling happy is different from ‘being proud of’. 
It’s the difference between saying ‘i am feeling good that I accomplished my goal’ vs ‘I am happy because I accomplished my goal myself & I am better than others’. In the former, there is joy of reaching a goal & infinite scope to improve myself or just enjoy what has been achieved. In the latter there is a chance of complacency creeping in & an element of I am superior to the other. The latter feeling shows off in behaviour towards others – not just verbal, but actions, body language & more. 
Being happy about an achievement is feeling good myself about something I did. It’s about self & it does not necessarily compare. Being proud is more about constantly giving those signals to others that ‘ I am better’.

Don’t agree? Don’t have to…. write back to us. Let’s have a debate on this

Defogger is an ordinary citizen of india who works for a living, blogs for more than a decade on travel & food, travels extensively, eats anything that fellow humans eat (he is however not a cannibal), loves meeting new people, getting to know thoughts, cultures, philosophies, reads a lot, loves chatting, is full of humour, loves to observe constant & raises questions on habits, practices, norms etc etc that Homo sapiens have created for themselves ….

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