Wednesday, May 11, 2005

If you notice, so many of us are worried about our ‘image’ more than anything else. We are all busy sticking to our images of who we think we are. Of course, it also means this is with regard to ‘other’ people’s perception of our image. Confusing? It’s not really that complicated!
A husband and wife have been married for five years now and the wife’s mother always taught her to respect her husband and his family. Now, five years down the line, this woman discovers that her husband and her in-laws are not all that ‘respectable’ and being the humans that we all are, we commit some really stupid mistakes. Because this woman has squeezed herself into this ‘image’ of the ‘ideal’ wife/ daughter-in-law, she refuses to depart from it by not speaking up at all! Ok, now we all might not identify with a situation like this. Let’s take another example.
There is this young man in his early twenties who’s just got his degree and has begun working in a very reputed firm with a handsome salary, perks etc. His family, his friends, his neighbours…everyone is happy about him. He’s enjoying his job too…even his odd hours and overtime. After about four months in the job, he realises that he’s not all that happy. He feels this kind of heavy feeling in his head when he wakes up and thinks about going to work. It becomes a burden. He gets this job because his qualification matches his job profile. But his heart lies in theatre. He knows it. It won’t pay well, the working hours would be odd but still he would love going for rehearsals anyway. The lights, the stage, the energy, the script…he is dreaming about it when he goes for his job too. What would this man do? Normally, he would stick to his job because, suddenly he would lose all the ‘status’ associated with the job. Perhaps he doesn’t want people around to think that he is a ‘struggler’ in the theatre business. So, even though his heart yearns for something else, he doesn’t do anything about it. Reason? IMAGE!
Unfortunately, this the way mind works.
What is Life about after all? Being happy, right? So of what consequence is living something we don’t enjoy?
On a lighter note, one of teachers used to call this state of mind, ‘toilet-seat mentality’!

5 comments:

Confuzzled said...

hey AD pretty much what I was thinking of writing about these days....nevermind u did it fairly well:)
btw i have sent u a mail on ur acousticdreamerplanet id about the workshop that u wanted to take for the kids.reply soon when u read it:)

RS said...

Nicely put, maybe it's also lethargy? fear of the unknown? not wanting change?

Acoustic Dreamer said...

@rs
Yes, it may be all that too. But then something needs to be done about it! There is really no point in living a life which is not on one's own terms. Sooner or later, it's bound to tire you, what say?

Self Writeous said...

Rings true, can see myself being drawn into the vortex.

borntodre@m said...

Guess we shd be able to do what we wann do in our life ...if not in this life then when ;)

as Confu says "time is ticking" ..so just do it .. everything is relative ..so why to think about "image" ..that too in others' eyes :D