It Makes you a Slave -
People often seek social validation, praise and adoration. This social approval raises us to the heavens, rendering us elated and joyful. But when confronted with social disapproval, contempt and hate, we are lowered to the pits, upset and despondent. People’s views are temperamental, changing and oscillating, like the seasons. If you allow social approval to raise you and disapproval to lower you, you become a pawn to the fluctuating opinions of others. You become their slave, their plaything, their marionette.
You Cannot Please Everyone -
People possess different desires, expectations or standards. It is impossible to accommodate to people’s disparate, disunited, and divergent wants. In an attempt to please everyone, you perpetually manipulate and warp yourself, switching this mask for that mask, and in the process, you lose yourself. As Carl Jung, the psychoanalyst noted, the greater the cleavage between the self (one’s true essence) and the persona (the masks put on when confronting the world) the greater the neurosis (mental illness).
People are not Wise -
‘Why do you take pleasure in being praised by men whom you yourself cannot praise?’ - Seneca
Often people are whimsical, emotional, temperamental; a slave to their passions. They think not rationally or logically, they contemplate matters not wisely, and hence do not come to wise conclusions. And you care for such people’s opinions?
The Antidote -
Psychological literature indicates that voluntary, as opposed to involuntary exposure to one’s fears is curative. You must decide to willingly expose yourself to that which you fear, that you may transcend it. In acquainting yourself with your fear, you actualise the latent and dormant, but nonetheless alive courage which lies within you. There existed an ancient philosophical practice of going out of one’s way to trigger the disapproval of others. This way the practisers would realise their courage to stand alone and endure the hate of others, overcoming their obsession to win the admiration of others. For instance, Diogenes would walk backwards into a theatre and when scorned would say, ‘aren't you ashamed that while you are walking in the wrong direction in life, you scoff at me for walking backwards into a theatre’.
The Image -
(The image is a depiction of Diogenes (404-323 BCE), a Greek Philosopher, known for wandering in Athens holding a lantern, in search of an honest man. It is said that Alexander the Great — who had conquered the known world, who possessed everything a man could possess in the material realm, seemingly free and liberated, dominating the earthly hierarchy — proclaimed that, ‘if I were not Alexander, I would like to be Diogenes’. For Alexander knew that Diogenes, despite his poverty, was the true conqueror, the true king amongst men, the truly free man. He was king, having conquered that primitive and potent urge to care and he was free, free from that oh so cumbersome burden).
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