Do it for yourself because nobody else will
Just worry about yourself. A quasi-command I heard all too often growing up. I would stare at the jumble of notes in front of me preoccupied with what, at the time, seemed like a mystery of life. Why was I being made to practice a whole hour more than my brother? Demonstrations of utter familial injustice were never rare in our household. And neither me or not my brother let them go unnoticed. But still, there we were. One being allowed to watch television before tidying her room, the other practically detained in his room until it was spotless.
The truth is, reveling in someone else's glory only proved to be distracting in whatever I was trying to accomplish. So, being told to worry only about myself might have been the most sage advice I had ever received. You may be wondering how, during a time of globalization and cooperation, I could possibly be advocating such self-revolving tendencies.
Ironically, the best way to understand this mindset is to think about others. Here's the thing: Most people are so focused on their own route that they don't take their eyes off the road or their hands off the wheel for even a second. Your successes and failures will most likely pass them by like a row of trees lining the highway. Once in a while, a matter of coincidence will make you a speed bump placed in the middle of the road. Impossible to ignore. It's not that people don't care. It's that it doesn't affect them. They say that Bill Gates would lose money stopping to pick up a twenty dollar bill that has fallen from his pocket. Similarly, it's a waste of time and effort for people to stop and think about your advantages and benefits when they could be moving forward themselves.
Like anything we don't want to believe, we can twist this into something a little more positive. If we do what we do for ourselves and for nobody else, if we fully commit ourselves to practicing that Baroque masterpiece rather than wallowing in self-pity, if we let our passions soar without having our wings clipped by the shears of seeming partiality, we find ourselves consumed by our own successes rather than those of others. So live to prove yourself, not to disprove others. If you're not doing it for you, who is?
The truth is, reveling in someone else's glory only proved to be distracting in whatever I was trying to accomplish. So, being told to worry only about myself might have been the most sage advice I had ever received. You may be wondering how, during a time of globalization and cooperation, I could possibly be advocating such self-revolving tendencies.
Ironically, the best way to understand this mindset is to think about others. Here's the thing: Most people are so focused on their own route that they don't take their eyes off the road or their hands off the wheel for even a second. Your successes and failures will most likely pass them by like a row of trees lining the highway. Once in a while, a matter of coincidence will make you a speed bump placed in the middle of the road. Impossible to ignore. It's not that people don't care. It's that it doesn't affect them. They say that Bill Gates would lose money stopping to pick up a twenty dollar bill that has fallen from his pocket. Similarly, it's a waste of time and effort for people to stop and think about your advantages and benefits when they could be moving forward themselves.
Like anything we don't want to believe, we can twist this into something a little more positive. If we do what we do for ourselves and for nobody else, if we fully commit ourselves to practicing that Baroque masterpiece rather than wallowing in self-pity, if we let our passions soar without having our wings clipped by the shears of seeming partiality, we find ourselves consumed by our own successes rather than those of others. So live to prove yourself, not to disprove others. If you're not doing it for you, who is?
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