Tag: sacrifice

  • The Lonely Path (II)

    The Lonely Path (II)

    That incomplete thought process is hounding me. It feels as if the main point that I tried to convey in the first take on this subject eluded that entire post. The main point was simply this. Before I continue, I am well aware that me using the term simple when explaining what’s going on in my head is quite the oxymoron. So there is no need to snigger about that.

    Anyway, the point is, when we choose to pursue a greater calling in life that stretches who we are and what we stand for, we need to realise that the people that are familiar with who we are will no longer know the person that we are striving to become. Under ideal circumstances they will grow with us. But ideals are most often talked about and rarely implemented. So expect to feel a creeping sense of isolation when you push yourself beyond the norms that surround you.

    Understand that when you outgrow the environment that you’re in, those that have grown to be defined by that environment will quickly assume that you are trying to be better than them. Or maybe they will assume that you think you are now better than them. Whether that is true is irrelevant. What is relevant is that you are different. You are hopefully a better version of you. But unless you surround yourself with people that appreciate and grow with you, that’s when the lonely path appears before you.

    You’ll find yourself growing uneasy as you feel at odds with what used to be familiar and comforting but slowly grows to feel discomforting and somewhat annoying. The comfort of familiarity will be replaced with the realisation of exclusion. Not the exclusion from social circles because that remains consistent for the most part. But the exclusion that leaves you emotionally wanting while physically accepted. An ambivalence sets in that challenges what you believe to be true against what you think may be an assumption of grandeur.

    Believing that you are capable of more borders precariously between confidence and delusion. Choose delusion, and you’ll be delusioned about your dreams and aspirations, resulting in an embrace of mediocrity so that the familiar comfort of fitting in continues to stroke your ego. Choose confidence and expect to be tested each time you take a bold step towards being the better version of you. Each time you break away from the norm you risk ridicule or rejection, or both. More importantly, each time you step up, you face self-doubt about your ability to succeed, and your motivation to want to succeed.

    Are you still serving that greater purpose or are you serving your ego? Are you pushing yourself to escape complacency or are you courting the admiration of others? The questions that hold you back never cease while the strength to push on is always just out of reach. That’s when you need to stretch yourself into unknown spaces. That’s when doing what feels comfortable and safe threatens to undo every bit of progress that you made up to that point. Even if no one else noticed that progress, you’ll know it was there after you gave it up. Give it up silently and it will haunt you quietly for the rest of your life as you wonder if you would have been able to pull it off. Protect that progress and nurture it into something greater, and you’ll face the reality of success and the horror of failure every few minutes in the back of your mind as you try to focus on what you feel passionate about while trying to subdue the self-doubt that gave you reason to procrastinate for so long.

    At that point you’ll slowly begin to realise that life was never about persevering through trials, it was always about facing the fears of success. By focusing on the trials we have something to raise as a trophy just by surviving. Succeeding in moments that trounced others feels like success, but once the moment passes, once the recognition of our struggles and our bravery fades, we’re back to facing off the same questions that taunted us when we grew restless in the first place when we first looked at our life and saw all the gaps we could fill to make it better and improve it beyond meaningless embellishments. You cannot unsee what you stared in the face. The more you try to ignore it, the more exhausting the effort to distract you from it.

    The lonely path is the only path that showed others that there is a better way. It is the sacrifice of one that improves the lives of many. Needing the guarantee of reciprocation or reward before setting out to improve this world feeds the transactional greed that defines too many of our interactions. Be like everyone else and you’ll always feel like you belong, except when you’re taking your final breath, or when you’ve aged beyond your fickle social needs. When your energy and your health no longer allows you to pursue with gusto the passion of your youth, desiring to change the world will be nothing more than self-inflicted torture. Building hope on the empty promises of inclusion by society is a foolish way to burn your candle. If you hope to die knowing that the world is better because of your existence, don’t shy away from the lonely path, embrace it.

  • Seeping Arrogance

    Seeping Arrogance

    No one simply decides to be arrogant, even though the obnoxious nature of some may convince us that such a deliberate decision was taken at some point. Arrogance is one of those under estimated traits that contaminate our character as we progress in our efforts for success in this life. The more correct answers we have for the struggles of others, or for that matter the assistance we are able to render to those less fortunate, or even the spirituality that we manage to garner in our efforts to be detached from worldliness, all lead us a step closer to growing pompous about our achievements or the value that we believe we add to the lives of others.

    Having anything to share is a step towards arrogance, especially if the motivation to share it is forgotten. I find myself grappling with what was once, in the not too distant past, easy concepts and principles to apply in my life. Being patient with those less grounded, or having a kind word to follow some tough love used to be easy. But this year has seen all that and more being taken for granted as I found myself immersed regularly into situations where my willingness to contribute was being abused, and my due rewards were being dismissed or denied. Rewards are not always material in nature. Sometimes it can be as simple as seeing our contribution appreciated, implemented, or shared further. Our egos require such fickle affirmation otherwise it becomes that much more difficult to subdue. 

    At some point, it becomes easy, and understandably so, to justify why endless sacrifice is not a worthy strategy to bring about the change we wish to see around us. A touch of arrogance, or perhaps narcissism is needed to maintain a balance of sanity. That touch relates to the belief that we indeed have something of value to share. Some could argue that this is confidence and generosity of spirit, rather than arrogance, but if we consider that such a notion is based on how we perceive our self worth, then I could easily counter argue that it is a belief that we have regarding our skill or attribute being superior to that of another. Arrogance follows very closely behind such a belief. The difficulty lies in recognising what value we are capable of contributing so that we give back to the society from which we took, versus assuming that the level of success we achieved was exclusively a result of our own efforts. Dismissing both and believing that we have nothing of value to contribute is an exercise in ingratitude, and an unhealthy ego, which in this context would be the antithesis of arrogance but equally destructive. And of course is the leading cause of depression and anxiety. 

    If I look at someone and wish that they were more like me because I think that I’ve achieved something noble or impressive that others will admire, then I’m simply feeding my ego by seeking opportunity to validate the value that I have placed on my own achievements. The more grateful recipients I find for my contributions, the more superior my contribution can be perceived, by others and myself.

    However, the fact that arrogance is largely a perceived trait rather than a practiced one adds its own complexity to the debate. As just one example, I can’t count the number of times when I was perceived and accused of being arrogant simply because I chose to actively resist common wisdom. For me, it was an attempt at convincing others to reconsider something that I believed was flawed even though they believed that it was a widely accepted truth. I felt a need to resist the common thinking because accepting it would not only compromise my principles about not following blindly, but also my desire to improve on almost anything and everything that I encounter. Of course to them, I was simply being argumentative because they assumed that my motivation for such a challenge was driven by a need to be right, or a need to be different.

    This makes me wonder if arrogance is ever truly arrogance in intent, or is it in fact a reflection of the arrogant nature of the one observing the so-called grand behavior? I’ve previously stated that arrogance is a defence mechanism. It’s a tool employed to distract attention away from a weakness or vulnerability, or to demand significance when we feel threatened. But within the context of this discussion, it’s that weakness it vulnerability on the part of the ones passing the judgement of arrogance, or on the part of the one perceived as being arrogant? I’m inclined to believe that it is the former.

    Perhaps arrogance is never one sided? Perhaps it only comes into play when the observer refuses to look beyond the obvious in order to understand what is driving the apparently arrogant behaviour so that we first seek to understand before we judge, rather than assuming that we’re better without even trying? 

  • Sometimes we sacrifice what we need to give happiness to others, be they loved or not. But when we expect something in return, it means that it wasn’t a sacrifice to begin with, but rather an exaggerated hope. 

  • Being human lies somewhere between being a narcissist and a martyr. And hypocrisy has no part to play at all.

    Cynically Jaded