Do I like myself way more than I ought to?

 In an earlier post,  I had mentioned that maybe "I just love myself way too much, or rathet I love my own conception of my own self way too much :)"

Too much is subjective but do i lke myself too much for my own good? Or to put that in past tense, have i been guilty of liking myself  or coneption of myself,  as I put it in that sentence, too much for my own good? Is that even possible?

...........

What you are going to be tomorrow is a function of what you are today,  the actions you take today and a bit of luck and randomness, that can go either way.  But the actions that you take today aren't independent of what you are today either,  no matter how much one may think that " today is the first day of the rest of my life".

More pertinent to the topic at hand,  if you like yourself "too much", then can your future really be that different from your present.  Sure there's a natural rate of change we are all comfortable with. But if that gradient has only got you here and will not get you where you want to be,  or where you think you want to be,  then you have to change the gradient. And can you really change the gradient when you like your self or your current self especially, too much.  On the contrary, you might even slow down the gradient, too absorbed in the current version of yourself,  so much that you don't really evolve over time.  There has to be that discomfort to attempt to change the gradient. Not liking parts of yourself. The steeper the change in the gradient that you wish to see, is it fair to say, the more parts of yourself or the me critical parts of yourself you need to be uncomfortable with? Even some of the things that may actually make you you at this point?

Now graident itself isn't everything.  There is the gradient of the gradient you know! So while you are younger,  you could still change yourself slightly and then even more slightly and then even more,  till you get to the point where the gradient is at a comfortable level relative to where you want to reach. And with a bit of luck,  you may not even need to keep changung the gradient that much,  and let luck do that for you.  So you could still be just that little uncomfortable with yourself,  even if you are far from where you want to be,  and slowly make your way to it.

But when you are older , there is lesser and lesser time left to get where you want.  There is no time for second order effects to play out. You have to change if you want to,  and quick.

To make the analogy clear,  think of a 50 over match with a 300 run target. You are off to a bad start at 30/3 after 10. You can choose to still go at 4 an over in the next 10 and 5 in the following 10, and then make a dash in the last 20. But if you are 170/5 after 40, then you just don't have enough overs to slowly change your target run rate.

Now heres the thing. ofcourse the discomfort is only part of the thing.  You first of all need to have sufficent capability to make that gradient change. Can you actually be in essence, a different person? Well, here again ,its easier at 20 than at 40. For capability, like outcomes is also very much a function of our past and oir choices and is highly path dependent.

Which makes me wonder if I have got the causality wrong? Am I too much in love with my own self because I just can't change, not the original hypothesis of well I like myself too much , and hence I am not experiencing the discomfort needed for change. 

......

Like with everything else,  I wish i thought of all this while I was 20, not when I am 40( well, 41). But as is the story with all my life,  i have always realized and figured out things when it is too late to be useful. MAYBE. 

Funnily enough,  i am less in love with my own self at 41 ( still maybe a lot more than ought to?) than I was at 20. And perhaps it's actually actively bad to learn the wrong lessons late!

Because maybe at some point,  you just need to adjust your conceptions of what you want to be in the future ( which after all, is just mathematically a smaller subset with each passing day) rather than feeling the discomfort. The 50 over cricket analogy is in order again. Maybe its a 300-350 pitch but at 170/4 after 40 , would you really go for 130 in the last 10? Maybe not!





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