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04:23 PM
Bikram Vohra
JournalismPakistan.com
September, 20, 2013
Out there is a whole industry dedicated to making you find yourself and feel better about it. What it doesn't tell you is that if you succeed in discovering the real you what happens if you don't like your real self. I mean if you are a victim of Murphy's Law and things deliberately go wrong for you (where are the keys, how come the knob broke in my hand, where is the second sock, why has the battery gone dead when I have to make a vital call, that sort of stuff) it is three to one you'll look deep at this new genuine person that you are and you'll say, sheeesh, I like the pretend me much more.
Fat lot of good it will do you having paid a fortune for books and courses and seminars and here you are stuck up the tree with the real you and that is someone you can't stand.
I think it is an invasion of privacy. All these years you have spent putting together a whole personae, sculpting at least a tolerable entity, layer by layer, all the flaws neatly camouflaged, the stellar performance, the mask over the truth, the painstaking painting of the mystique, the character you have created for yourself, at least it is something you can live with.
Then along comes this battalion of do-gooders, in print, on TV, in the lecture hall, determined to explore your psyche and change you from what you have become to what you actually were.
Unmasked!! Years of hard work down the drain, there you are now, 48 years old looking at this unattractive, unwholesome pathetic figure yanked out from the halfway decent facade you had engineered, the shell now broken as this complete stranger presumes to take over your life.
Hello, hello, just a moment, who are you?
I am the real you, been stuck in there like the genie in the bottle, thanks for getting me out, mate, bit stuffy in there.
Well, would it be asking too much for you to go back in there.
You kidding, don't you want to be the real you.
Not really, quite happy with the false one, if you don't mind.
Now, now, is that any way to talk, old friend, truth will out and all that, can I help it if you spend years running away from yourself, which is actually me.
Yes, but now that we have met, I'd rather we hadn't because you aren't my type.
Sunshine, I am not only your type I am you.
Rather like the old Groucho line: why would I be a member of a club that would have someone like me as a member.
(The writer is a Senior Editorial Advisor of Khaleej Times and the paper’s former Editor. He has also been the Editor of Gulf News, Gulf Today, Emirates Today and Bahrain Tribune)
If my call is so important to them, why don’t they answer it for 22 minutes?
How come when I want to, but something specific online is the only item out of stock.
When I get into a queue or lane going fast, the moment I get in, it becomes the slowest and refuses to budge.
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