Anupam- The Dreamer

The legendary tennis player Andre Agassi sported very long hair in his early career. It looked good on him and he was a sensation. It was called as “lion’s mane” as it was similar to the hair on the lion’s body. The only problem was that it was a WIG! Yes, Agassi himself revealed that later in 2009 in his autobiography, Open. And that pretending to have long hair when he actually was bald (he started losing hair from the age 19) cost his him French open final match in 1990. Because he was too worried that his wig shouldn’t fall off during the match! So, he concentrated more on keeping the wig on his head than to be himself and focus on winning the matches. He was trying to control the “uncontrollable” (the wig), instead of trying to control the “controllable” i.e. his efforts in winning the match (later in life, when he embraced his bald look, he became a champion!).

And if you delve deep into this psyche, the urge to control the uncontrollable comes from the deep desire to be better than others! We constantly compare ourselves to others, and in the process start to lose our own selves! Someone beautifully said “Comparison is the end of joy”. It can’t be truer than that! When we constantly compare, we try to control the “uncontrollable”, which could be anything like looks, intelligence, talent, wealth etc etc. And many of the times, running after the thing which is not in our control distances us from the things that are actually in our “own control”. At the end of the day, we lose both- the obvious “uncontrollable” and the achievable “controllable”.

When I was doing industrial training at a manufacturing company in Kota during my college days, I met a great mentor. He told me and my friend- “Don’t ever compare your lives with others, because you don’t know what their life journey is. You both are on different journeys, so stop comparing and start living your lives to your best potential”. What a beautiful and wise thing he told us! Certainly, we can get inspired by others and try to adopt their good qualities to improve our own lives and to reach our best potential. But, instead of blindly copying others, we can adapt those things to our own likings and aptitude. If Usain Bolt was asked to forcefully learn chess or to do software engineering, then we would have failed in both- these other careers as well as in running!

Sometime back, I was talking to a friend and he said comparing rich and the poor– “If the richest people cannot cure their disease, then no one else can”. I am afraid, but that is not a complete picture! If the body of a rich man has got cancer or some other life threatening disease and he/she is not responding to the best treatment, doesn’t mean that if the best treatment is given to the poor person he/she would also not recover. The body, immunity, willpower, genetic makeup of each person is different. So, concluding something on the basis of money or wealth only, does not hold true always! If money only could buy happiness for everyone, then the richest lot would have been the happiest. But, alas! It’s not true! Some things cannot be compared only on the basis of possession of tangible things or money or wealth, because sometimes happiness comes from things which are intangible. And those can never be compared to others.

True comparison, if any, can be done with oneself. We can try to outperform our today with yesterday. But, if we fall into the trap of outperforming others, then we will only become bitter, and not better!

Till next time….