It’s a pointless effort

Do we all have a trait in common? In fact, we have many, but here is a unique one that none among us can willfully deny.  If you’re scratching your head wondering what on earth it could be, let me answer for you. It’s our innate urge to jump in and prove ourselves right. No matter what a conversation is about, and how it progresses, almost all of us are guilty of spending substantial amount of time and effort to prove a point about something or someone. Here is my question to all those who try hard to prove their point? What do you gain in return? The harder you try to prove, the more time and energy you spend, the more stubborn both you and the partaker become. You can never prove yourself right with prolonged arguments. It does nothing other than draining out your invaluable time and effort. Neither do you succeed nor does the partaker agree to what you are trying to prove. Simply put, no matter how hard you try, you can never prove your point to a person who holds a dynamically different opinion and is stubborn beyond belief. 

You might wonder how to heal your depressed mind when someone is vehement about proving you wrong. The only solution is to ignore and move on. What’s right for you may not be right for me. Your perspectives, beliefs, and opinions belong to you and needn’t be what others might feel about a similar situation. In other words, you needn’t lose sleep over doing things what’s right for the world, despite knowing that it can be wrong for you. You needn’t fret or freak out if you truly believe that what you chose, said, or did is right for your life. Don’t fall into traps set by opinionated minds. You will only do harm to your body and mind by mounting more and more tensions, anger, and hard feelings.  As long as you’re aware that your opinion, belief, idea, or value is what you need in life, stop thinking about what the world has to say. Listening to it will only wear you down and escalate your anger. You might end up taking foolish decisions or doing mindless actions that you will regret or feel bad about when you look back later in life. 

In short, refrain from proving yourself and instead be confident about what you do, speak, think, and believe in. You can never force others to believe or agree with you, no matter how hard you try.  Let me end the post with the reason why I penned this down. An ex-boss once told me that my works lack quality. Like anyone else out there, I too am fallible in my own way and was annoyed and heartbroken. I had literally worked my butt off to complete all the projects before the slated deadlines. While clients appreciated all the works, my ex-boss always made me feel as if I wasn't competent enough. But I held back my sadness and resentment because I knew he was wrong. And the best way to disarm such negative people is to ignore them. So I moved on with my life, rather than waiting to prove him wrong.

The Tharoor obsession

Not the just film fraternity, the whole country was saddened by the passing away of veteran actor Shashi Kapoor. Soon after he took his final bow, the entire social media was flooded with condolence messages from all four corners of the globe.  However, the team of a well known channel was so caught up in the rush that they confused Shashi Kapoor with renowned writer and Congress MP Dr. Shashi Tharoor. The goofy name mix-up didn’t go unnoticed on Twitter. Soon the channel became the butt of all jokes and was trolled left and right for the blunder. In his typical self, Dr. Tharoor too took no time give the wittiest response to the blooper which was first noticed and tweeted by ANI’s Nishant Singh.

Though the channel apologized to Dr.Tharoor later, and wished him good health, the mistake once again goes on to prove that Indian media will never get rid of its “Shashi Tharoor obsession”. His name is so ingrained into their brains that they hastily jump in to affix the surname Tharoor to anyone named Shashi, only to make themselves the laughing stocks of the nation. There is a constant display of toxic rush to make wrong judgments and air malicious allegations against the trailblazer parliamentarian from Trivandrum. What surprises me the most is his dignified and composed responses to voyeuristic media reports with manipulated and malicious claims against him. He is patience personified and wonderfully polite.

Print or visual, our media houses leaves no stones unturned to shamelessly peek into every single moment of Dr.Tharoor’s life, political or not, and make a lurid headline out of them in the name of freedom of press.  It isn’t unknown that in addition to this gossip-mongering section of the media fraternity, both opposition and some of his fellow party members too dislike him for reasons best known to them. They work as a team most of the time, play multiple roles and become the journos, witnesses, lawyers, judges, and the jury, declare their “verdicts”, make him the villain, and show him in bad light every single day, with absolutely zero evidence to substantiate the reports and comments aired. This is nothing but a TRP-driven witch hunt.

I am yet to figure out what exactly is making them so uneasy and uncomfortable. Had he been the kind of person that most politicians and scandal-mongering journos try to portray, he would not have become a Lok Sabha MP twice over, both when his party won and when they lost. Despite being called an elitist, Tharoor won real elections both the time and never took the “shortcut” Rajya Sabha route to become an MP. Moreover, one cannot easily ignore the reluctant admiration that most of these dislikers have for Dr. Tharoor’s oratory skills and the free flowing broad knowledge, for the widely –read books he has written over the years, and the fact that he was always confidently avoided or walked away from all political traps.

Despite lauding for his speech at the Oxford University or for his recent literary works that went on to become the best sellers, both journos and petty politicians never think twice before starting vitriolic and disdaining attacks against him just to grab headlines and get attention.  When will our leaders and media houses get rid of their despicable obsession with making sensational and superfluous comments and airing spiteful news reports against Dr. Tharoor? Grow up guys! Whatever the controversies or allegations are, let the law enforcement officials and judiciary exercise their duties and come up with their verdicts. We needn’t take over their duties. So, get over your unhealthy obsession to malign Dr. Tharoor and instead focus on relevant and must-talked-about issues that our country is currently dealing with.