What makes me tick

(My 300th post. Why is it that when you hit a milestone, you suddenly feel that you have to share some wisdom? Though, my wisdom is a sort of oxymoron)

"What makes me tick?" is a question that most of us do not really find an answer for, possibly because we are too busy trying to find out what makes other people tick. When I tried for myself, I find that I do have a few answers but whether they are correct - and, more to the point, lasting - remains to be seen.

Let me first get one thing out of the way. Why I am single is a question easily answered and has no deep insights embedded in it. The most common answer I have heard from other singles is that, "The ones I wanted would not have me and the ones who would have me I did not want". Not true of me. I would have wanted any woman who would have me and, maybe, I would have remained single anyway since, possibly, none of them would have me. I never put it to the test, though, since I never wanted anyone badly enough to have to work for it - and, not being the son of a rich man, I would have had to work for it.

I tried for the answers to my attitude to money, to being a productive member of Society and to my purpose in life. Deep questions, people say, but since I am not a deep person myself, I dredged in pretty shallow waters.

Money

Back in school, we kids used to cluster around the local sweet-shop to buy in the toffees of our choice. We all ended up buying what we liked eating and we would have found the idea ridiculous that we ought to like something else, either because more people were buying it or because it was more expensive. The problem with me is that I never grew up and, thus, I still am immature enough to find the idea ridiculous that I ought to like the food at a 5-Star hotel and not the local eatery. Effectively, therefore, my need for money was seriously lesser than most.

At school, again, there was this great admiration for winning a cup and in one of the competitions. THAT was what we used to think of as success. In a choice of the following options for having a 100m race cup, only the first was considered Success.

1. Win a cup by winning the race.
2. Bet on the results of the Long Jump with the winner of the 100m race and win the cup by winning the bet.
3. Find a couple of lost cups on the road and pick them up.
4. Inherit six cups from your dad.

When I grew up, I found that all of them were considered SUCCESS and the more cups you had, the bigger a success you were, regardless of HOW you ended up with the cups. Of course, you substituted 'money' instead of 'cups' and 'work' instead of 'race'.

Lacking in maturity as I was, I could see that I needed money for my needs but was unable to correlate money with success BECAUSE I was unable to see all these options as being equal measures of success.

Productivity

Being a member of society and using the products that someone in Society was producing, it seemed to me that I should also be producing something of value to Society. My stint at work as well as my observations killed this notion also. Given that the money one earns ought to be a measure of how valuable Society thinks your contributions are, I came to the following conclusions:

1. Growing wheat is less valuable than betting on future prices of wheat.
2. Teaching children is less valuable than selling cosmetics.
3. Teaching students at IIT is less valuable than teaching people how to get into IIT.
4. Producing goods and services is less valuable than trading in stocks of companies that produced goods and services.
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The problem for me was that Society valued the least what I valued the most and vice versa. In short, I FELT unproductive when Society thought me productive and Society felt I was unproductive when I thought myself productive. The net result was that I decided to enjoy myself without regard to 'productivity'. Who knows, one fine day, Society may decide to pay me humongous sums for lying around in bed and, then, the world would laud me for my immense productivity.

Purpose:

A lot has been said of the quest for a purpose to life. I am one of those gifted with a complete disregard to having a reason to live. 'I exist, therefore I deserve to exist' sums up my philosophy. Having no pressing desire to DO something with life AND no angst about the purposelessness of life, I am quite content to please myself. AND, since I have escaped all the thickets of thinking that pleasing myself inter alia involved pleasing others, there is little problem involved.

In short, the only person who you can be sure of pleasing is your own self. Provided you really know what pleases you!