My Innermost Thoughts - Part II : A virus called pretention

Man is a make-believe animal: he is never so truly himself as when he is acting a part.
-- William Hazlitt

What did you do this weekend?

Such a simple question to answer right? Not if you are 23 year old Software Engineer, with no personal life and who’s only pass time is writing blogs!

Every time somebody asks me this question, I feel this pang of guilt in my heart that I don’t let myself have a good time. So many times I have thought of forgetting about work and stress and just have a good time. And every time I have thought of it, I have either ended up in one of those malls watching stupid movies and eating overpriced food which otherwise I would have fed to a dog OR spending time with friends talking about things that 23 year old(or rather young) software engineers with no personal life talk about. The latter sounds good. But after 4 years of doing it you will get bored of the routine, trust me. So all this made me think (which is an occasional activity for my, an otherwise under-worked brain). What is the best possible way to enjoy myself in these brief (extremely brief I must say) weekends? Then after a lot of introspection over a "two minute" period, I finally concluded that the best way of enjoying my weekends is to do what I love the most. Now that was the first step, thinking of what to do. After this came the difficult part. You must understand, me being a true hot blooded 23 year old male, there are a lot of things I love. I guess “things” is not the proper way of putting it but you must have gotten the hint by now. Anyways coming back to the point, it was difficult to identify all the things I would love to do on a weekend. So this required me a lot of thinking (and I must add a lot of work for that under-worked brain of mine!). And voila! I came up with this extremely short list of things I wanted to do:

• Extreme rafting in dangerous water with swirling currents and high waterfalls….

Well I am sort of afraid of water and in general hate to be near any sort of current so I had to cancel this from the list.

• Bungee jumping or Sky diving

Sounds like fun and worth a try some time in future. But with a general fear of altitude and a slim paycheck I had to cancel this one too. Although it’s because of the latter cause and nothing to do with heights. I am a brave person and can overcome any fear, although a flying cockroach still scares me. I know it is a small creature who’s only fault is getting wings and learning how to fly (a feat that every human wishes to do), but it still scares the shit out of me whenever I see one. Anyways I have read somewhere that you should always fear something because the absence of fear makes a man thick headed. So my fear of cockroaches is in good spirit and for my own moral well being and I am proud to say that!

Now back to my lists.

• Be myself!

Well this one was interesting and it came out of nowhere. I dismissed it at first thinking how silly it was. Then as I moved on to write the next one on the list, I started to think. And then it hit me! This is what I would love to do all my life (and not just weekends). Be myself, be unpretentious. Come to think of it, the entire time you are at work, you are pretending to be someone else because you want to be that someone. You may be a fresher with absolutely no idea about how or why you were hired, but you pretend to be knowing everything and nod your head every time your supervisor explains something to you, because you want to be that person who knows everything (If given a chance you would love to be that supervisor who’s only work seems to be giving work to others and earns three times as you even though he is a half wit and can barely count numbers let alone supervise you). You unwillingly do some a** kissing with your supervisors and pretend to be all chubby with them because you want them to like you. All this pretension however has an adverse effect on your life because it slowly transforms you into your pretension. This may sound all philosophical and it partly is, but that doesn’t mean it is not true.

And as I sat there on my bed thinking of pretensions and how I can be myself atleast for two days of a week, a lot of ideas came to my mind.

And the best way seemed to be to write about it. Writing is something which I love to do the most and add “Being myself” and it seemed like a wonderful idea, spiritual even. Writing is such a pure way out and barring some extreme cases, is extremely unpretentious. I say extreme cases as there may be some people who get confused with life and fiction and dwell on the grey area in-between.

So I will continue to do what I love the most, being myself and writing about “being myself” and hope one day find a solution to life’s meaning………….. Nah! Let’s leave that part to the philosophers shall we ;)