Who Are We!?

Are we what our friends like or our foes hate or our critics shred or just what we believe!? We could be a bit n piece of everything of it and even more, each one of us. One man could be seen by 100 eyes in 1000 different ways and also within, man feels the hate n love for himself both at different times. Our state of being happy and sad is the proof of such feelings that we possess! Nobody is always happy and nobody is always sad, so no one is in complete love or hatred for oneself. And why does that happen?

Is it because we really don’t know who we are! Then who should answer this question? If I tell my boss that I’m a very good employee, he may not believe it and demand for a survey on what people feel about me. I went on to ask after conducting a class for 10days to the same set of participants (about 27 of them) out of which 8 went on to fill additional comments. While one wrote ‘it is hoped that the trainer could be more cheerful’ the other contradicted this by saying ‘sense of humor shown by trainer was a factor that attracted us’. While one said ‘More interactions with students would be great’ two others said ‘nothing he needs to improve because he is awesome!!’ and ‘he is a perfect trainer.’ So this still didn’t answer who I really am.

Is it right to ask others about who we are? May be yes, coz we live in a society where others live too. May be no, coz what one thinks of oneself matters more than what others decide. Like we keep blaming our politicians for the ruin they’ve done to our countries but, after all the hard work and spending so much money, if we had gotten to their seats we would've certainly done things to benefit us with the kind of power that we got. So what matters is the trust, out of which respect grows. No matter what the opposition says, no matter how unhappy people are with the ruling party, no matter how much of a change they desire, they still keep voting for the ruling government in Singapore. That’s only because of the trust a man has created by developing a model over so many years, which is hard to break. And no matter how much of manipulations he or his team has done, as long as the trust is kept, over a period of time respect is born. And the man is liked by all. Who he is and what he does are trusted, respected.

Trust and respect go hand in hand. If I trust myself, I like myself and if I start doubting on my abilities, that’s when contradiction starts within. Likewise, if I respect you, everything is fine. If I don’t, the relation stinks.

So who we are might not be an easy question to answer and may never lead to answer in a lifetime, but trust and respect for oneself and for others define a whole lot of things in the scheme called life. So as long as I trust and respect myself, my friends, my family and my world around me I’ve pretty much answered who I am.

Have I?