In these modern times, one can behold tangible rise in human comfort/luxury levels, unlike in earlier days, wherein people had to scrimp and save every penny of pittance of their salary, to run a family.
Thanks to today’s plum jobs with fat pay packets that have palpably increased our purchasing power. But somewhere in the process, there has been concomitant rise in human frustration levels too.
Apparently there are many factors, responsible for engendering of this high-level frustration in humans. One of the cardinal factors could be that we are simply not happy with ourselves – not being happy with what we have, the way we are, and the way our life/lifestyle is.
In other words, there is always that gnawing feeling in us that someone else’s life/lifestyle is better than us, or someone is doing better than us, rather enjoying life better than us. Instead of taking cognizance of all good things that we are bestowed with, we are busy scrutinizing the things that others are having, which we may be missing!
Here, I’m reminded of two apocryphal stories that we often heard as kiddies. It seems, once a jackal, on seeing the flight of birds, flying in sky forming fabulous formations, started fabricating fantasies of he too blissfully flying in air, just like those winged creatures. Soon he began collecting twigs and leaves, jettisoned from alpine trees, along with resin (glue), dripping from tree trunks, from which he crafted out pair of faux wings.
After fixing these fake wings on him, he bounded towards the craggy hills with his new-found joy. Standing at the precipice, he started flapping his wings, taking a downward plunge. Apparently in his gusto to imitate the birds, he had crashed to ground, meeting with death and destruction.
Yet another story is that of a crow, which on seeing a peacock dance with its resplendent feathers, magnificently spread all around its body; was engulfed by an enormous desire to emulate him. Soon he recklessly started pulling out all his feathers, and began prancing just as peacock. The jungle animals, that witnessed this wacky and hilarious scene, rolled on ground in rip-roaring laughter, at the cost of this crow, which had made a mockery of itself.
The drift of these stories is that we should try creating our own identity/individuality, and be happy with what we have, and the way we are, and refrain from asinine act of unhealthily emulating someone, their life/lifestyle. Be it a profession or hobby (even a dress or hairstyle for that matter!) what suits others, not necessarily may suit us.
Instead of discerning our own skills/talents, and other good things we are gifted with; if we go about blindly following someone, sure we’d end up being big losers in life, besides belittling ourselves. And once we don’t love/respect ourselves, how could we expect others to do it?
