Character or Reputation: Whats Your Pick?

Last few days I have been watching this news of a British formula 1 driver and the Honda car company found guilty of fielding an underweight car which came third in the grand prix. Sporting history is replete with many more such examples like taking performance-enhancing drugs to achieve fame. What satisfaction a man can get if he knows that the fame achieved by him was by unethical means. I often wonder why people at all levels do things like this to achieve fame. Many of us try to sneak into others paper to know that one extra multiple choice answer that may decide our fate in the public exams. Many others thrive on borrowed ideas, especially the music world where plagiarism is the order of the day.

Undoubtedly, its the question of one's integrity and honesty. More deeply this has a profound aspect dealing with one's character and reputation. Character is what we are and reputation is what others think we are. Most of us all the time and all of us many a times are more comfortable to have a good reputation than character. When we look at ourselves in naked honesty, we know what we actually are. But we are comfortable with a good reputation, a false face, facade that we are not, if others like that false face and facade. Most of us bother more about what others think about us than what we think of ourselves. We are more worried all the time with what is visible that what actually it is. I will quote a simple example which most of us will agree with. When we are buying a table cloth for our dining table or a pair of jeans, we mostly do not select a white coloured cloth. Why? Because we feel that it gets dirty "faster"! A deeper thinking makes us realise that the amount of dirt does not depend on the colour of the cloth but on the dirt that gathers on it. This dirt is always the same amount. Just that in a white colour cloth, it is more visible. Hence it doesn't "look" nice. In other colours, the quantity of dust is same but the its "less visible". So we are comfortable with a "dirty" coloured table cloth as long as it doesn't "look" dirty. Can you see a relation between the character and reputation what I was talking about?

We try to put a facade, project something what we always think other may like rather than what actually it is, what actually we are. I am trying to impress someone, that someone is trying is impress someone else and this cycle goes on. Undoubtedly, every one has a facade, a face other than his real true self for this world. The more this distance between the facade and the real, less is the inner happiness of a person. More these two faces are congruent the more blissful a person is. The distance between this facade and the real is striking in the case of the rich, the famous, the popular esp in the media world. Someone remarked "Whosoever said money cant buy happiness didnt know where to shop". I feel money can buy comforts but not happiness. Comforts may get a man temporary illusion of happiness but the real happiness comes from how close your facade is to your real self. That's the precise reason why the rich and the famous run towards the spiritual gurus while the supposedly illiterate, poor shepherd or an Eskimo is truly happy living his day to his hearts content, blissfully ignorant of the so called comforts which are supposedly there to make a man more happy. I am not saying that we must eschew wealth or comforts. Its not an ideal world. But defintely we can make an effort to live honestly,ethically and true to our self. Easier said than done!!

This blog is not a morale lecture but a look at ourselves through the thinking lens. Because the knowledge of the fact that we are ignorant is the first step towards education!