Skip to main content

Self-importance

Image courtesy: Onedio

New Year resolutions never worked for me.  So I stopped making them long ago.  But this year I made a resolution.  And I know it will work.  Because I have already made it work to a large extent in the past year.  That was one of my few achievements in 2017. 

To live without any feeling of self-importance.  That’s my New Year resolution.  I have already tried it quite successfully in the past year and it is immensely rewarding.  I’ll tell you why.

I used to feel hurt by the deeds and misdeeds of other people.  Then came a flash of inspiration at some point in 2017.  Probably, it was not a moment; it was a gradual realisation, the result of a protracted self-examination which started some time in 2015 when I lost my job in Delhi which was one of the best things in my life.  The depression that followed lasted months and made me extremely contemplative. 

Why do I feel hurt easily?  It’s because I consider myself important.  What if I just let go that ego and see myself as an insignificant person?  I tried it out.  Eventually life became easy and fun too.  In fact, I simply ceased being hurt by anything that people did.  On the contrary, events became entertaining.  I began to be amused by what people did.  I realised how silly I had made myself earlier with my pompousness. 

It is in those days of contemplation that I reached out to the stars.  I thought of the billions of galaxies out there.  The vastness of the cosmos overwhelmed me enough to make me realise my diminutiveness.  What am I in this cosmos of billions of galaxies with infinity of stars? 

The stars taught me humility.  I know that my New Year resolution will work this year. 


Comments

  1. JaiJanuary 1, 2018 at 8:48 PM

    Yes. It is silly of human beings to take themselves so seriously... I too had this problem till I realized how small I am in this vast universe that stretches infinitely on all sides...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJanuary 2, 2018 at 12:29 PM

      Your writings exude that egolessness. Glad to have encountered you in the blogosphere.

      Delete
  2. Sreedhar BhattaramJanuary 1, 2018 at 9:10 PM

    Right introspection and evaluation.. This attitude helps us a lot in retaining our peace with us.. A nice Post, Tomichan.. Wish you and your family a Happy New Year!

    ReplyDelete
  3. parwatisingariJanuary 2, 2018 at 6:16 AM

    :) great going.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
44 comments
Read more

Florentino’s Many Loves

Florentino Ariza has had 622 serious relationships (combo pack with sex) apart from numerous fleeting liaisons before he is able to embrace the only woman whom he loved with all his heart and soul. And that embrace happens “after a long and troubled love affair” that lasted 51 years, 9 months, and 4 days. Florentino is in his late 70s when he is able to behold, and hold as well, the very body of his beloved Fermina, who is just a few years younger than him. She now stands before him with her wrinkled shoulders, sagged breasts, and flabby skin that is as pale and cold as a frog’s. It is the culmination of a long, very long, wait as far as Florentino is concerned, the end of his passionate quest for his holy grail. “I’ve remained a virgin for you,” he says. All those 622 and more women whose details filled the 25 diaries that he kept writing with meticulous devotion have now vanished into thin air. They mean nothing now that he has reached where he longed to reach all his life. The
62 comments
Read more

Unromantic Men

Romance is a tenderness of the heart. That is disappearing even from the movies. Tenderness of heart is not a virtue anymore; it is a weakness. Who is an ideal man in today’s world? Shakespeare’s Romeo and Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay’s Devdas would be considered as fools in today’s world in which the wealthiest individuals appear on elite lists, ‘strong’ leaders are hailed as nationalist heroes, and success is equated with anything other than traditional virtues. The protagonist of Colleen McCullough’s 1977 novel, The Thorn Birds [which sold more than 33 million copies], is torn between his idealism and his natural weaknesses as a human being. Ralph de Bricassart is a young Catholic priest who is sent on a kind of punishment-appointment to a remote rural area of Australia where the Cleary family arrives from New Zealand in 1921 to take care of the enormous estate of Mary Carson who is Paddy Cleary’s own sister. Meggy Cleary is the only daughter of Paddy and Fiona who have eight so
39 comments
Read more

Yesterday

With students of Carmel Margaret, are you grieving / Over Goldengrove unleaving…? It was one of my first days in the eleventh class of Carmel Public School in Kerala, the last school of my teaching career. One girl, whose name was not Margaret, was in the class looking extremely melancholy. I had noticed her for a few days. I didn’t know how to put the matter over to her. I had already told the students that a smiling face was a rule in the English class. Since Margaret didn’t comply, I chose to drag Hopkins in. I replaced the name of Margaret with the girl’s actual name, however, when I quoted the lines. Margaret is a little girl in the Hopkins poem. Looking at autumn’s falling leaves, Margaret is saddened by the fact of life’s inevitable degeneration. The leaves have to turn yellow and eventually fall. And decay. The poet tells her that she has no choice but accept certain inevitabilities of life. Sorrow is our legacy, Margaret , I said to Margaret’s alter ego in my class. Let
36 comments
Read more

Octlantis

I was reading an essay on octopuses when friend John walked in. When he is bored of his usual activities – babysitting and gardening – he would come over. Politics was the favourite concern of our conversations. We discussed politics so earnestly that any observer might think that we were running the world through the politicians quite like the gods running it through their devotees. “Octopuses are quite queer creatures,” I said. The essay I was reading had got all my attention. Moreover, I was getting bored of politics which is irredeemable anyway. “They have too many brains and a lot of hearts.” “That’s queer indeed,” John agreed. “Each arm has a mind of its own. Two-thirds of an octopus’s neurons are found in their arms. The arms can taste, touch, feel and act on their own without any input from the brain.” “They are quite like our politicians,” John observed. Everything is linked to politics in John’s mind. I was impressed with his analogy, however. “Perhaps, you’re r
34 comments
Read more