Are you what you are?

I have always thought I am a wonderful person, a philanthropist, an altruist, an awesome singer, an okay-ly cute girl with an adorable character. These are not stuff I have explicitly heard from all the people I encounter – some people I know have probably told some of these. But majorly, these are my own conclusions based on what I feel about myself. 

...I walk into a room and find a lot of creased foreheads and frowned lips, muttering under the breaths – probably cursing their bosses – and  I say some random stuff to someone and manage to crack up a couple of guys there. I walk out of the room feeling I am the best stress buster in the whole wide world, oh! Those cigarettes can go hang themselves in shame. 

...I look at a very old beggar, all shrivelled and shivering. I walk to the nearest hotel, buy him something for dinner and give it to him. He looks up at me gratefully and I smile at him and walk away feeling like someone pumped a lot of helium into me. 

...I remember a very difficult note from a Thyagaraja krithi and I hum it. Someone across the desk looks up at me in awe and says I am the best, second only to Sudha Ragunathan.  

...I wear kajal to work one day and someone says I look very pretty. I flash my teeth at her, thank her and quietly revel in the note of appreciation. I think, I know I can be a doll!

I do realise that the couple of guys I thought I made happy with my witty comments could’ve actually been laughing at my hair sticking up in wrong directions; that in my elation of having helped that one beggar, I ignored many more on the way; that the co-worker who appraised me for my musical talent was probably scoffing at me; and that the girl who called me pretty was perhaps, being satirical. But I choose not to wonder if what people tell me on my face is pretentious or if what I feel about myself is, in fact, what everyone feels about me too. I am not proud or vain. I am simply a person who chooses to be happy – with myself primarily. 

If someone looks at me down the length of his nose, I marvel at the length of his nose and don't get queasy at the dirty look he is shooting my way. I hop to my seat at work when I have had a happy morning (I don’t hop all the way, of course!); and if it bothers that one austere girl at my work-bay, I don’t really have to alleviate my expression of joy to appease her. (But this, in no way means, every time I feel light-headed I would scream my joy out and disrupt the sober, diligent work-environment that is expected out of a company like mine.)

I am what I think I am. I am most certainly not obdurate in my ways of living. But I am not going to let someone’s comment on my cartoon tattoo perturb my day.

All of us innately seek approval and appreciation from everyone around us, and sometimes from even those we have never known in our lifetimes. But isn’t it unfair to let that define you? We are meant to live in harmony with the world. And that does require making lives around us happier. But to satiate oneself only after everyone has declared he is happy with you is too taxing to even survive. I mean, there is just one ‘you’ in this planet. Shouldn’t you be the one defining what you are?  And if it means having to earn some unpleasant remarks along the way, so what!?

P.S: If you think I am too full of myself and if you are not someone I would be hurt to hear such a thing from, I would be privileged to politely ignore you. ‘Demarcation’, they call it.