Friday, December 14, 2012

The Paradoxes of Our Lives - To Express Yourself Fully, Seek Not to Impress

It is our s desire to express ourselves to the fullest. Our constant cravings for 'being free', 'for being ourselves' etc indicate our desire to express ourselves more. But what is stopping us from expressing ourselves fully?
Pic courtesy Satish Nargundkar

Others obviously. We'd say that people 'do not understand us' etc. Hence we cannot express (look at what happened to the cartoonist, the painter, the writer, the dancer, the actor...)

What we want really is to impress people first and get their buy-in. After they assure us that whatever we say or do will be fine with them (however mediocre) - we will 'express'. But why will they do that if we do not have the conviction to express ourselves first? All experience shows that we cannot first 'impress' them without 'expressing' ourselves fully.

To express ourselves - to be 'free' - we need to first take that leap of faith (as little birds do when they first learn to fly) and discover for ourselves what we are capable of. We need to first impress ourselves with our ideas, acts, convictions and continue to express ourselves in the manner we know best. Write, create, paint, speak, make money, stitch, make shoes, make food.  Spread love. Smile.

There is much we can do if we wish to 'express' ourselves to 'impress' ourselves. There is little we actually will do if we seek to impress others.

The day you find you are honest enough, 'free' enough, 'yourself' enough, the day when people's opinions cease to matter to you - you will find that people are 'impressed' with your 'expression'.

To 'express' fully, give up the need to 'impress' others.

In fact to express fully, you need only to impress yourself. When you impress yourself, you lose sight of others, of society. And by losing yourself in the act, you free yourself.

2 comments:

Rajendra said...

True..and I am impressed!

Harimohan said...

Raja, Am glad you expressed (about being impressed)