Don't hate; deflate (your ego)

[Trying my best to be as correct as possible, since the people who do not have the same opinion as me are not necessarily in the wrong and me in the right.]

I found this image on Tumblr, and tons of repressed memories popped into my head. Memories that needed to be spilled out onto virtual paper. Memories that some people might identify with, and I hate that people had to go through this to identify with the feeling.

I have always been an over-the-top person with my heart on my sleeve, waiting to tell someone the best thing ever. Poker Face is just a Lady Gaga song to me and not something I have. Every time I had something exciting in my life, I always wanted to share it with everyone.

Society in this time and age, however, mostly works purely on sarcasm and putting down people who actually like stuff. A person ends up having to like something “ironically” just to get by the people who would pull them down.

I have been on both sides, unfortunately. I used to be the person who used to shake my head when people sang Taylor Swift songs or even said they liked her music. I was also a person who liked to follow Glee unapologetically at the same time. See the duality (read: hypocrisy) in my own personality?

I remember a friend of mine who was in junior college while I was in engineering. She was in charge of a fest and spent a lot of time publicizing it. A tiny part of me, a part which I call the “evil society opinion” part, thought that she was wasting her time for no reason, getting all hyped about a fest which would be forgotten two hours after it ended. The rational part of me, the one which makes me try to be politically correct, immediately thought, “Well, why can’t she be excited about something? It is a thing she is into and something she likes.”

I want to put it up to age. I want to say that as children, we have short attention spans and do not have the time to humor someone else’s opinions. I want to say that as we grow older, our maturity allows us to accept other opinions and listen to them. However, this is the ideal situation, not the norm. I have friends who sometimes listen to me talk about something for ages, but completely tune me out if they are not in the mood to listen to me.

Sometimes, I can see my own words hiccuping, the myriad of sentences in my multi-tasking brain coming to a pause, my brain rearranging my thoughts to appease the other person as opposed to getting my own opinions out. Let me tell you, this is a very toxic path to walk on. If you’re not careful enough, you can easily fall down the cliff and become a yes-person. You become so worried about other people’s opinions that you completely mask your own to wholeheartedly agree with theirs.

Coming back to the original image, I observe that I am still apologetic when I rant on and on about something. Whether it be feminism, Harry Potter or just the fact that a student I work with validated all my hard work with one heart-felt compliment, I worry that I talk too much, that I am making it all about myself.

However, looking at it from an outsider’s point of view, I am content to let them ramble on and on about their life. What is so bad about my life that it is not worth the same attention that theirs is?

On a slightly related note, people love to put themselves down, but not others. You can always see people compliment other people on everything from their wardrobe to small accomplishments in their life. Praising themselves, although, is another matter. I almost always exert a self-deprecating view of the things I have done, probably because it seems easier to make it sound like my accomplishments are smaller, that they do not matter enough.

This might just come back to society where praising yourself is equivalent to arrogance, that only self-obsessed pricks (presumably) are allowed to build themselves up. Well, I disagree. Sometimes, you have to be your own cheerleader. That implies that achievements, however small or big should be celebrated. It is progress in your life, and isn’t that the best thing ever?

So, remember kids,

         1. When your brain is ready and signals to your mouth to say something that might upset someone, think about it:

a.       Would you usually pass that comment?

b.      Is it a dick comment?

c.    If (b) is true, do not make it, irrespective of the answer to a. Think of it as an OR statement.

    2. Reward yourself when you have completed something you thought was difficult. It doesn’t necessarily have to be food, it could be that top you were eyeing, that YouTube video you haven’t seen yet because it’s a whole hour as opposed to just about ten minutes, something that makes you happy.

Have you guys ever faced something? Let me know and we can bond over it!

Keep this song in your head, and sing it out to others (or even yourself) when they try to bring you down: