Day 63 - Arrogance and Humility

Isn't it interesting that we value humility, abhor arrogance but strive to be the best? How are these three emotions interlinked, you may ask? Please do and allow me to elaborate on my perspective of them.

In our lives we usually strive for excellence or at least are 'trained' to think that we should be the best in whatever we do. The constant 'great statement' that we hear or advice that the successful people seem to make is "Do whatever you want but be the best in what you do". So we strive towards that. Being the best is not an easy task. Its a tough road lined with long hours, hard work, compromise on parties and friends and single minded focus on what we want to be best at. Its not for everybody which is why just a few people get to be at the top of the list. These people have struggled to get there giving up on a lot of things that we took for granted and enjoyed in our youth.But once they get there mere mortals like us look up to them and seek their advice in that field.

Amitabh Bachchan never spent time with his family when he was building his career, Tendulkar was at the nets for hours avoiding that one rupee coin from falling from the stumps while his friends were watching movies, Bill Gates was slogging it out on the lab of his school while his friends were out partying, The Beatles were playing 8 hours daily in Germany while other bands were bedding women and smoking pot and there are many such examples. But once they became BigB, Sachin Tendulkar, Bill Gates and The Beatles all of us are/were in awe of them. Let's be frank.......the slogged their asses out to become who they are.

After all that struggle some of these top percentile of people attain their dream and revel in the fact that they know much better about their subject than others. They realise that the ones who come to them seek answers to problems in the field that are so obvious but they can't see because they didn't hone those skills. As more and more of this happens, they tend to look down on the advice-seekers and become 'arrogant' in our words. But they have earned the arrogance!

As mere mortals we tend to forget the struggle that the person has gone through to attain that status. Probably because we did not go through it ourselves. We watched movies, played games, had fun while these toppers were slogging it out. And we don't want to be reminded about it by them!

We want them to be humble about their success. We want them to say that it was pure luck that they got where they are so that we feel better and think that we were not so lucky. We raise the humble ones on a pedestal and abhor the arrogant ones. Why? Because the arrogant ones make us realise our folly that we did not work as hard when we could have while the humble ones make us feel that we were just not lucky and were not at the right place at the right time as they were.

BULLSHIT! Do you think that a Sachin Tendulkar does not realise that he really IS THE BEST? or an Amitabh Bachchan? But we deride a Shah Rukh Khan because he accepts that he is better than the others and we love an Amitabh Bachchan because he never says that he is the best............even if he desperately wants to. Don't you think that a Sachin Tendulkar or an Amitabh Bachchan want to shout from the top of the roof tops that they slogged their asses out to become the best and that THEY ARE THE BEST? I'm sure they do but we won't let them.

Its time that we changed a bit as well. Arrogance is an earned quality and we should give them the right to be arrogant about it.

Don't you?