news details |
|
|
| Be True to Yourself: No Breach of Personality Please | | | D.K.Vaid | 12/3/2011 10:49:22 PM |
| When I was a child student, I used to get immensely
and easily influenced by my teachers in their mannerism and would subconsciously copy their physical traits and attributes. One teacher would prompt me to imitate his wears, the other one his tone and tenor, still the third's graceful gait would I gladly practice. I had a natural instinct for these little carbon copy adaptations and would take on them effortlessly. Without least affectation, whatsoever!
The process for me was as natural as fish taking to water and the birds to the sky. That was my way of taking lessons in personality development. That was then. The fact notwithstanding that I had never gone near the likes of Dale Carengie or Shiv Khera, then. 'The laws of least effort' as propounded by self help exponent, Deepak Chopra, appeared on the world screen much later. Also, my school mates and the scholarly around me were not remotely acquainted with the modern genre of books called 'Self Help Books': 'Personality Development Books' or 'Life Coach Books' et al.
This does not, however, mean that the great human guides and philosophers like Freud, Young, Aristotle and Socrates were not the favourites of the academically literate. It was then as it is now. Rather, the lessons in the couplets of Surdass and Lord Krishna's sermons in the Gita were not only read and heard or sung and preached, but also put to use. Their use was devotedly avid and avidly devoted in almost all households. The degree of use, though, varied and was unabashedly proportionate to the caste and class of the households.
These and several other scriptural teachings were uncontested tools and techniques of personality designing. But great men of the yore, as also the protagonists of Holy Gita, were to me then, mere icons of worship. Figures far removed could not be for real to a small boy who was fond of imitations. Abstract is a poor counterpart of Concrete; when it comes to wielding influences on the 'underteen thinking potato'. My teachers were physically real and thus practically influencing.
Teachers those days were real mentors and like the kneaded clay of the potter, I was gladly available for getting shaped and re-shaped. The inherent error of the process was not known to me, then. I was happily and fervently taking to this technique of getting shaped through copying and enjoying the results. It was as if I had complete power on myself at that tender age. One day I was my English Teacher Santokh Singh with his ferocious mien and unfaulted speech; the other day I was my Hindi Teacher Saroop Chand with bright Budha head and vast island eyes. Still on other occasions I would turn out to be my Mathematics teacher. This one briefly, though! Mathematics never attracted me and the smart young be-spectacled, impeccably dressed Mr.Rehual Kant had to bear the burden of my grudge with subtractions and multiplications. Later, he turned out to be my most remembered teacher. Unknowingly, I had picked up from him the art of getting dressed gracefully.
And till this day, I have never flaunted a new dress. I simply put my body into it with such natural ease, as if I was born into it. It is a simple repeat of yolk and shell of the egg. The effects are marvelous, impressive and original. Sometimes adoptions get imbibed into you with such natural ease that you become 'water'. Water is colourless, odourless and shapeless; but still it is an entity without a parallel.
The years flew by. The underteen took to teens and the classroom changed with change in standards. The set of teachers which were changing lethargically in lower sections were now changing vigorously and in entirety. My job had grown difficult. Faithful adaptions and pure imitations of the early years had started countenancing some distractions. By the time I was in standard tenth, the teachers were changed like quilt covers. The management had developed a new love for clean administration and in the process different sets of teachers were put to probation. The effect on our studies and my copying experiments was simply devastating.
My burden was twofold. Besides studies getting fractured, my proficiency in the favourite game of copying on personality traits was getting grievously impaired with this frequent change in 'persona dramatis' of my life. Distractions, however, did not rest on this single factor.
My class had suddenly allowed entry to a bevy of pretty and not so pretty girls. Some highly gregarious; some coyly shy; moderate none! The school had gone coeducational. Boys in their middle and late teens, already under the whip of psychological and physiological sticks were suddenly exposed to a new sociological milieu. Cohabiting heterosexuals before a common black board is no mean task to accomplish. The management of the school had desired to perform the task at the cost of semi-disturbed teenagers who were otherwise shining happy with the entry of the Eves in their garden. Lovely distractions, but distractions all the same!
Some attractive young ladies also arrived later as new teachers. My experiments in imitation had to suffer new variables. Hitherto male fiefdom was struck by females. Copying this class of teachers was neither to my liking, nor my field of expertise. Already I was nicknamed as lass lad because of fairness and girlish looks. I did not desire to compound my embarrassment by copying these young ladies. But some attributes of theirs were an open invitation to the imitator in me. I indulged into this luxury at night before a looking mirror. Come morning, the mirror would be wiped and the body washed. All legendary traces of the night copying purged entirely!
While shaping and reshaping of a self continued through the process of copying, imitations, adaptions, selections, rejections and reselections etc.; the young womb of my dwarf personality was laden with traits which were drastically contradictory. When two siblings quarrel, the hope of truce is not far away. This is, however, not so with different personality traits when assembled in one basket through sheer leisure and pleasure. Being not akin they do not cohabit peacefully. They quarrel, contradict; fight and fret. The resultant personality is a bundle of contradictions. That was me. My self medication of developing a personality by borrowing and copying traits from left and right had failed me. Copying does not pay; neither in school examination nor in life.
Gradually the realization of being myself dawned on me. The 'original me' though covered under the debris of my audacious experimentation of teenage years, was still alive and pulsating. That is when I started de-educating myself to get back to the real. Tending to be a photocopier is wrong education. Each of us is a direct creation of God and God's package is not discriminatory. Each package is unique and peculiar. Each kit contains all the tools; grey matter, creativity, IQ, EQ etc. etc. No borrowings and imitations are required. Everything is in place. Explore properly and groom correctly. Nobody has put this more tellingly than John Mason - 'You were born original. Don't die a copy.'
Hold to yourself fast please and stay original. Do not borrow and commit the error of that old child student. The parallel medicines tend to stagger and may keep you hamstrung on the rope. Neither on earth, nor in sky! That is what they say 'Being neither here, nor there.' Firm up! Original is firm and firm is original!
Originality is respected even in the mundane affairs of marketing and production. There are rather legal provisions available against copying, producing imitations and duplication. In the world of letters too, plagiarism is a cognizable offence and Copy Rights Acts have both legal and ethical sanction. How then, in the area which concerns creations of God, can the imitations and duplications be permitted? Our copy rights are with our Creator. We cannot authorize anybody to copy us; unlike the authority available in the field of publication and production. We can neither borrow, nor lend the originality of each personality text. This text created cannot be superimposed or tampered with. Only additions or subtractions are permissible by way of development. God wishes me to stay original and not a prototype. I am a patented product: Me & Me Inc!
Carbon copies are thus, strictly prohibited in the field of personality formation. Breach of personality copy rights is an affront to the Creator. I am His image. How can I allow myself to be tampered or dismembered? Same goes for you please! Burn all the 'carbons' you have. You don't need them anymore. Carbon copies have to be rendered out of fashion. Once for all! Remember your Gautama Budha: 'You yourself, as much as anybody in the universe, deserve your love and affection.' Lau Tzu puts it even more convincingly: 'The snow goose need not bathe to make itself white. Neither need you do anything but be yourself.'
(The Columnist with his pen name as Darshan Darshi is a renowned Dogri writer and a Sahitya Akademi Awardee; besides former Director School Education) |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
STOCK UPDATE |
|
|
 |
| BSE
Sensex |
 |
| NSE
Nifty |
|
|
| |
CRICKET UPDATE |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
