I wish the fuel to my happiness was something other than success.
Everything about a person is an amalgamation of his interpretation of the behavior of people around him. As a person, the little things you ingrained into you at childhood stay for life. Coming from a South Asian background, one of those little things was that your goal of life is to come out on top of some abstract man-made food chain.
It was always about being the best in everything you do - be it sports, music or school. Being an okay guitarist never cut it. Your parents were never proud of trying. They were proud of winning. At least that's the way it was for my family. Eventually, I guess I turned out to be a product of Pavlovian conditioning. Every time I would get good grades, I would get a pat on the back and would be happy. Every time I wouldn't, I'd be reprimanded and would be sad. Before I knew it, the pat on the back could be eliminated from the equation.
Now, success in the face of competition would be the source of most my true pleasure and failure would lead to a dark bitter unhappiness. The worse thing about that is that it works much like a video game. The more you win, the harder it becomes to keep winning. Soon, you feel like your true inherent potential is maxing out, and there's literally no further that you can go, at least none in that you can perceive.
When you plateau, the source of your happiness stops. You're constantly struggling to be on top of this food chain which doesn't really matter. You wonder, why couldn't my parents just taught me that happiness needn't come from success. What if I could be someone who could be truly happy regardless of what the other 7 billion people on the planet were doing.
I wish the fuel to my happiness was something other than success.Everything about a person is an amalgamation of his interpretation of the behavior of people around him. As a person, the little things you ingrained into you at childhood stay for life. Coming from a South Asian background, one of those little things was that your goal of life is to come out on top of some abstract man-made food chain.It was always about being the best in everything you do - be it sports, music or school. Being an okay guitarist never cut it. Your parents were never proud of trying. They were proud of winning. At least that's the way it was for my family. Eventually, I guess I turned out to be a product of Pavlovian conditioning. Every time I would get good grades, I would get a pat on the back and would be happy. Every time I wouldn't, I'd be reprimanded and would be sad. Before I knew it, the pat on the back could be eliminated from the equation.Now, success in the face of competition would be the source of most my true pleasure and failure would lead to a dark bitter unhappiness. The worse thing about that is that it works much like a video game. The more you win, the harder it becomes to keep winning. Soon, you feel like your true inherent potential is maxing out, and there's literally no further that you can go, at least none in that you can perceive.When you plateau, the source of your happiness stops. You're constantly struggling to be on top of this food chain which doesn't really matter. You wonder, why couldn't my parents just taught me that happiness needn't come from success. What if I could be someone who could be truly happy regardless of what the other 7 billion people on the planet were doing.
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