“Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are”,
Tasneem Kabir
As I walk down the Boulevard, I am met by the sight of myriad desolate and woebegone souls who move around with all sense of hope lost. These are the people whose shoulders are weighed down by social expectation, competition and the pressure to conform to all established norms.
These are the people hit by the most vicious, invasive catastrophe of all: depression. I want to be known the world over as a sensationally motivational author, a wizard capable of lighting up the path for others by offering, through my words, an all scintillating torch: the torch of courage. I wish to let all those who house enormous potential but are victims of circumstance know that nature loves courage. We make the commitment and nature will respond to that commitment by removing impossible obstacles and trammel. I want to convey to all that we must dream for the impossible and be far better than we are, and the world will not misprize, will not grind us under. Rather, it will lift us up and show us how magic is done. It is done by summoning the will and attempting the absurd and hurling yourself into the deep, seemingly perpetual abyss of possibility and discovering it’s a feather bed.
The global community, in all its vastness, seems to be hallucinating for its reiteration on the creation of a utopian society. A utopian society isn’t one where nothing seems to go wrong. It is one which makes each and every member feel worthy. People need to be told that they must not ask themselves what the world needs. Rather, they must ask themselves what makes them come alive and then go do that, for what the world needs most is people who have come alive. Depression is that vice which leads you to believe that the more you try to fit in, the better it will be for you but the truth remains that the more you try to fit in, the more you feel like an outsider. Watching the ‘normal people’ as they go about their automatic existences to saying club passwords like “Have a nice day” when you yearn inside to say unconventional things like, “Don’t you think it feels eerily brilliant when the stars come out?”, we must come to realize that success and happiness lies in embracing yourself as you are, which ultimately compels the world to do the same. The wondrous thought by John Wooden, “Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are”, says it all and is theurgy. Nobody has the right to hold the reigns to your happiness, you have to and you must catch it yourself.
When we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people the permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
Tasneem Kabir is feature editor with The legitimate
