IIT was the first place to witness relative grading. Almost after 12 years I want to tell you why playing relative is a poor concept.
Experience makes you both wiser and bitter. Comparisons are pretty irrelevant between individuals as backgrounds, capabilities and motivations almost always differ. Most of us are grappling with multitude of vagaries of life. The wisdom gained over time tells me to stop comparing and competing with anyone except myself. The bitterness grows when I observe lack of understanding of this concept in our society. The tendency to compare is also embedded in me somewhere which needs to be worked on.
It is high time we redefine failure and success for our own well being. To do better than most and still have a poor life because focus is on there are some still better than you is unfair. One of the seven sins is envy and playing relative makes us prone to it. It hardly serves our purpose as it can lead to distractions from our own self. A better approach is to ask ourselves what can we offer to the world and then spend our energies to do that better. If someone does even that better than us, applaud and learn. Competition is good and also necessary to measure and push ourselves but let it not bring us down. The want for competition should be self-driven and the mind should be trained to accept failure.
I'm not giving the pill of following your passions and day dreaming like it's a fad these days. Think first, understand your background, responsibilities, risks and most importantly the fire and capabilities within you. If you are not the "special" one regarded by the society, understand this, it does not always translate to a "special" life and vice versa. Go absolute. Stop measuring against others. Start assessing yourself, your goals, your desires, your limitations. Basically get real.
The stress of relative game will kill most of us over time, the realization of beauty within and our uniqueness will lead to a better life.
Experience makes you both wiser and bitter. Comparisons are pretty irrelevant between individuals as backgrounds, capabilities and motivations almost always differ. Most of us are grappling with multitude of vagaries of life. The wisdom gained over time tells me to stop comparing and competing with anyone except myself. The bitterness grows when I observe lack of understanding of this concept in our society. The tendency to compare is also embedded in me somewhere which needs to be worked on.
It is high time we redefine failure and success for our own well being. To do better than most and still have a poor life because focus is on there are some still better than you is unfair. One of the seven sins is envy and playing relative makes us prone to it. It hardly serves our purpose as it can lead to distractions from our own self. A better approach is to ask ourselves what can we offer to the world and then spend our energies to do that better. If someone does even that better than us, applaud and learn. Competition is good and also necessary to measure and push ourselves but let it not bring us down. The want for competition should be self-driven and the mind should be trained to accept failure.
I'm not giving the pill of following your passions and day dreaming like it's a fad these days. Think first, understand your background, responsibilities, risks and most importantly the fire and capabilities within you. If you are not the "special" one regarded by the society, understand this, it does not always translate to a "special" life and vice versa. Go absolute. Stop measuring against others. Start assessing yourself, your goals, your desires, your limitations. Basically get real.
The stress of relative game will kill most of us over time, the realization of beauty within and our uniqueness will lead to a better life.
