A lesson I learnt in my Bachelor
Who knew, one of the most celebrated and exaggerated days of VIPS would be our last. Ethnic day…no one knows why it exists, the “cool” dudes are too cool to come, most of them take the party elsewhere so to somewhat boast to the world their “alpha-ness”, trying to separate themselves from the cattle. Everyone dresses up in bright Indian ethnic garments which almost feels like a contrast to the situation the world was headed in. Or maybe at that time, our young innocent minds were naive, just not experienced enough to judge the situation astutely.
On the face of it, we all portrayed how unwelcoming we are of the virus. But deep down we all wanted a pandemic, for it to hit our college, however lightly, enough to shut it down and still give us the thrill of our lives. Cause at the end, that’s what we are… Dopamine seeking parasites.
Anyways, coming back to my experience at Uni… always hearing about DU and all the first-tier universities, I had no idea what to expect. Also, coming from Gurgaon, I didn’t know much about the people I was going to be interacting with.
Within the first year itself, I logically ended up developing, what I call the Gurgaon elitist mindset. Thinking of Delhi-ites as subservient to us, rather proud, Gurgaon-ites.
Somewhat similar to how Frieza views the Saiyan race in Dragon Ball Z. The analogy is self-explanatory.
“How and why?”, you would ask? Forming and paying heed to stereotypes.
The way ketchup makes everything better for you, the way you can’t think beyond Pizzas and Pasta when it comes to food, the way you cant get over Punjabi music and can’t seem to appreciate the finer things in life.
But what I came to realise was that this lens even corrupted my view of people when they did something I didn’t expect them to do. With that lens, they seemed to be pretentious.
I’m not here to talk about whether these stereotypes are right or wrong. Their accuracy does not matter. What matters is how much we depend upon them subconsciously or consciously when we address situations.
So what is the underlying fallacy that needs to be addressed?
Acceptance.
Acceptance that people can be different, acceptance that they have the right to be different, acceptance that they have the right to have rights and acceptance that being different does not make them inferior or superior in any way.
Life never was, and never will be so linear that judgement becomes a plausible virtue.
When I look back, I remember having many ups and downs in college life. A whole lot of tussles (my friends will vouch for that), my first relationship my first breakup, my first failed business idea, my first successful business idea and there was something that came as a hindrance in it all — Judgement, onset by my lack of Acceptance.
I would be lying if I said that it has gone away completely but as inefficient machines of nature, habits take time to imprint. So take a deep breath, introspect and destroy any constraint that you can see. In the end, it’s our ability to be fluid that makes us successful.
