HAVE you noticed the increasing use of the “I” word in conversations around us? “I did this”, “I said that…” “Ultimately, I had to resolve the situation…” When someone goes wrong, “Didn’t I warn you beforehand…?”
When someone achieves something, “Oh, I always knew you would win this!”
When something untoward happens, “I did have a premonition…”
And don’t just smile and nod in agreement. You do it too! All of us have this deep-seated, all-pervasive need to make our mark on events around us. Most conversations end up being nothing but an overlap of “I-s”, where each one tries to tell his story, or tries to prove her point. A long, dissatisfying talk later, you realise all you did was exhaust yourself trying to get your words across the other’s! Why this urge to prove our worth all the time, with everyone? Why do we need to keep stressing and advertising our ideas, our thoughts, our dreams, our successes, both big and small?
Perhaps the phrase, “pushing your boundaries” or “pushing yourself to perform better” takes on a whole new meaning for us when we try to impose our thoughts and ideas on those around us! Rather than pushing ourselves to perform better and going outside our comfort zone in pursuit of greater success, we think the more noise we make about our accomplishments, the better we become.
But to those who listen carefully, the echo of a hollow “I” is very clear. A senior colleague enjoys quoting the instance when he interviewed a young executive who spent time convincing him how he was a single-man team at his previous job! “You know what this told me about the guy?”asks the colleague. “So much use of ‘I’ showed me he was an extremely poor team leader!”
In a world overpopulated by celebrities perhaps the need to prove our own worth increases. And easy availability of social media encourages a self-promotional audience to indulge with impunity. Generation Y is certainly all about “I, Me, Myself ” and older generations perhaps see no harm in picking up a bit of the attitude from them. The internet news blog mashable.com quotes a recent survey of college students on attitudes, “Almost 40% (of Gen Y) agree that “being self-promoting, narcissistic, overconfident, and attention-seeking is helpful for succeeding in a competitive world!”
There was a time not long back when after a certain age, with a good job in hand and a family around us, we would settle down to stability and comfort. The only bit of promotional indulgence would be to encourage kids to recite a nursery rhyme or sing a song to impress visiting uncles and aunts. Today however, it is not just the kid, but the dad, the mom, the dog and even the house help who all set out to prove their accomplishments. For we are all told we need to keep growing; stopping and resting on your laurels just isn’t an option anymore. And so you are subjected to stories about the supposed intellect of kids you know for sure are duffers, and incidents cooked up to prove everyone’s superiority to the person next in line.
Where even celebrities and pseudo celebs feel the need for and use all available opportunities to promote themselves, the pressure on ordinary mortals to do likewise becomes immense. So then what happens to those amongst us who want to sit back and take it easy? Those of us who accept that we do not excel in anything to the extent of overshadowing all others! Can we not just be happy as good human beings going about our lives without having to compete with the best? After all, there can be only so many who march ahead and for that, there will have to be others who need to take a backseat. Need taking that seat necessarily mean having lost the race?
A colleague’s young life cut short unexpectedly due to immense stress brings home like nothing else the message that we are all running around like headless chickens for nothing! Must all growth and development be outward? Some time ago The Times of India dropped the capital ‘I’ to be replaced by a smaller ‘i’ on its edit page. Would it be so tough for us to do the same in our daily lives?
Why can we not stop “I”ing to the outer world and start “eyeing” our inner selves? For if we shine from within, the peace and contentment will be reflected to rest of the world around us as well.
