We are not born for the pleasure of others

We all seek validation. This is one thing we learn very early. Children feel happy and encouraged when people around them applaud and when their parents appreciate and reward them. When we get good grades, our parents seem to love us more and look happy. When we agree with people around us they tend to treat us nicely. However, when we question things, especially things related to culture, religion, or politics, people seem more hostile. When we fail or do something that is against the expectations of our parents or other family members they seem to be disappointed and unhappy even though we may be happy with our chosen path. All these things train us to seek validation from others. Slowly but steadily we get addicted to this continuous validation. We start designing our personality and behavior to please people around us in the expectation that if we please them we will be rewarded with praise and other accolades. In this process, we forget about our own self. It becomes impossible to differentiate what we want to do for our own happiness versus what we want to do to please others. The tragic result is that most of us don't know what we want and spend our entire lives for the pleasure of others thinking that their validation will make us happy. Instead of a human being, we become human doing, someone who is always doing something to get validation from others. 

We must remember that "we were not born for the pleasure of others." Most parents give birth to their kids for their own pleasure. It is not a kid's duty to thank their parents for their existence neither it is their duty to make their parents happy at all costs. Being nice and kind to others are wonderful qualities to have, everyone should aspire to have them. However, to design our behavior and personality only to please others takes us to a point where we don't realize who we are and what we want. The burden of expectations becomes so high that unknowingly we become the subject of fulfilling the desires of a few people around us. These people can be our parents, spouses and children, other family members, friends, or our bosses. Knowing about our own desires is not easy when we are bombarded with expectations from people around us from a very young age. It is not easy to have an independent thought process when we are continuously coached and brainwashed. Therefore, it is not easy to find self-acceptance when we grow up. Aggressive advertisements telling us how to be happy and what happiness means and looks like don't make this task any easier for us. When we can't stand on our own and don't have any individual identity we need validation from others to believe that our existence matters. Without that validity, we feel incomplete and insignificant. Knowingly and unknowingly we start working only for the pleasure of others, we dedicate our lives to doing things that may please others. We work really hard to collect things dictated by society but are scared to work hard towards our own dreams. We prefer to choose a guaranteed success path, dictated by society, no matter how hard or unpleasant that path is, just because people around us will approve and praise us for achieving those milestones. If this is all you want, then fine, go ahead. But if not, then show courage to follow an untraveled path and make sure to leave a trail for others so that when someone else needs to chart their own path they have an example to follow. Good luck. 

Thank you for reading and please share your views on this topic. 

© Vinay Thakur, All rights reserved, Vinay can be reached at thevinay2022@gmail.com

Don't trade self-respect for respect from others

Validation from others is one of the basic requirements for humans. We don't live in groups that we call society for only physical safety, but also because it is emotionally not easy for humans to survive alone. Humans are social animals, and with social life comes interaction with others, with that interaction comes different types of personal and social exchanges. Humans crave validation and respect from others. If our views, behavior, and personality are respected by others, we feel validated and our thinking about self-worth improves. Very few of us can ignore this need to get validation from others, people go to great lengths to receive such validation. Social media has exacerbated this need. Now, people crave continuous validation, their life depends on the number of likes and views of whatever they post on social media. This need has become so desperate that people are willing to trade self-respect to fit in and get that craved validation from others. That is, they are willing to trade their self-respect in return for respect from others.

Social media has provided a free and easily accessible avenue to become a famous and likable personality for everyone with internet access. This accessibility has its own pros and cons. Easy internet access has given us access to a vast amount of information, at the same time, it has given people a platform to broadcast themselves 24/7. When everyone is broadcasting who will watch? So, there is intense competition to capture and retain the audience whose attention span is reducing day by day. People are willing to post whatever it takes to get the attention of the online audience. Remember, when the new channels became available 24/7, they lost their unique ability to deliver news without much sensationalization and became entertainment channels. The same thing is happening with all social media users. In the race to capture the likes and views of online audiences, people are becoming objects of entertainment broadcasting their curated lives rather than sharing genuine human emotions. Qualities like compassion, support, love, and kindness could also be shared online, but we hardly see discussion about these things. Feelings like hate and dislike get a disproportionate amount of attention, and the display of unreasonable wealth and comfort also gets more eyeballs. People try to fit in by fulfilling these demands. Therefore, if exuberance, display of wealth and comfort, hate, dislike, political polarization, and divisive agenda are in high demand, they try to cater to this demand. As people's lives are overburdened with the expectation of being popular and relevant all the time, many try to mold themselves to fit into the current popular trends. This is why you see an endless supply of content that people watch without any emotional involvement. Online surfing has become like any other addictive behavior, people do it compulsively even at the cost of personal detriment as they just can't stop it even if they want to. I feel that people need to take a pause and self-reflect. They need to evaluate what they are doing and why. They should start with why first, it is always good to ask why are we doing something and then move on to the rest of the questions. Our self-respect is one of the most valuable treasures we possess, please don't trade it for respect from others. Remember, if you don't respect yourself, others for sure won't. So, start by respecting yourself and then build your surroundings with people who do not want you to trade your self-respect to get respect from them. 

Thank you for reading and please share your views on this topic. 

© Vinay Thakur, All rights reserved, Vinay can be reached at thevinay2022@gmail.com

Men always mattered, now it is the turn of women and others

"Do you think Taylor Swift has a cultural impact equal to Michael Jackson?" My daughter asked while we were chitchatting during a commercial break of the TV show Survivor.

"Not at all, MJ has a huge cultural impact, Taylor has just started, there is no comparison," I responded immediately, without even pondering for a second.

"What about equal to Beatles?" the follow-up question came immediately. 

"Again, no, she is too young, maybe in a few years," I replied.   

"As expected, men will never accept that a young girl can be a cultural icon, such misogynistic thinking," she replied. 

Ouch, that did hurt, especially for a person who calls himself a feminist. But was she wrong? Might be a little harsh and exaggerated reply, but maybe that's what was required for me to learn more about Taylor. No matter what I call myself, I was born and raised in a misogynist culture where females were treated in a certain way, and no matter how much I deconditioned from all that cultural conditioning, I think some residues still remain in the system and show their subtle effects. Much has been written about feminism and how it is helping women to break various barriers. This has resulted in a sort of counter-attack from some people by calling feminism anti-men, starting male-matters movements, or shamelessly glorifying toxic masculinity. I personally feel pity for such attempts, but one cannot deny that all these are desperate efforts to counter feminism, counter attempts by women to claim their place in society for the first time in human history. The problem with movements like "all lives matter," "male matters", or with counter statements like "not all men," is with the timing and intent, they are started not to raise those issues but to divert attention and raise doubts about the intentions behind the movements from which they want to divert the attention. For example, feminism is not against men but it is against toxic masculinity, patriarchy, misogyny, and other prejudices against women. Fighting against these social evils also helps men as much as it helps women. Fight against sexual harassment, patriarchy, toxic masculinity, or misogyny is not a fight against men, but it is a fight against the mindset that confines men and women in certain categories and doesn't allow any freedom. Feminism is to about replacing men with women but about providing women their own space that was always occupied by men not because men were more capable but because women were never given a fair chance to fight for it. Also, people fail to notice how inclusive and pivotal feminism is. Just look at various other movements that started after feminism to assert their identities and claim their place in society, for example, the LGBTQ+ movement. It did not conflict or clash with feminism, rather, feminism has created a path and space for all such movements to start and flourish, often this aspect of feminism is ignored. Men always mattered, but they like it or not, it is the turn of women and others to also matter. And women and others are not taking men's space but they are claiming their own space and controlling their own narrative that was always controlled by men. 

Now coming back to Taylor Swift, no doubt she is talented and famous. She worked really hard to earn her fame and success. Many celebrities attend football matches, but when the NFL tweets about your presence in the stadium that's not a small thing. When your concerts fill the biggest stadiums in different parts of the world, that's not a small thing. When a generation of young females look at you as their inspiration and icon, then it is not a small thing. Yes, she is a cultural icon like any other music legend in their prime days, nothing more, nothing less. I was not aware of it, but my ignorance doesn't change this fact.  

Thank you for reading and please share your views on this topic. 

© Vinay Thakur, All rights reserved, Vinay can be reached at thevinay2022@gmail.com