CHARLIE CHAPLIN once said: “Being a funny person does an awful lot of things to you. You feel that you should not get serious. Others don’t expect it from you and they don’t want to see it. You are stereotyped as a clown.They only want you to make them laugh.” In movies, a villain remains a villain mostly; if he wants to become a hero, the audience won’t accept it. The late MGR (M. G. Ramachandran) portrayed himself as a Samaritan. The audience said that he can do no wrong; he can only do correct things, fight against injustice and re-establish order. How does this happen?
From the moment we are born, we receive training in becoming a person. Parents, teachers and friends send numerous messages in a number of ways, signaling what is acceptable from us and what is not. So, we adapt our behaviour to these messages, because that is the easier way, the shortcut to get connected to others. This behaviour remains the same in adulthood and very few break away from that mould to be reborn.
The views others have of “who you are” or “who you should be” gets entrenched in your behaviour and it becomes difficult to uproot it, unless you take a momentous step to break away from the mould. If you want to be the person you want to be and ignore the messages others send, it would be a simple process to reclaim life. But it is an uphill task like breaking out of prison, like breaking the shell to come out, or peeling the protective layer to expose the core.
The real disappointment, frustration and dissatisfaction is because we are not that we want to be or what we are meant to be. Exploring a new territory seems to be a roadblock. The tested highway seems comfortable. For e.g. Christopher Columbus who wanted to sail to the Indies discovered America against all odds because he defied and refused to surrender to routine thinking. He said that there is something beyond what is seen and obvious. Charles Darwin could not have evolved the theory of Evolution, the struggle for existence and survival of the fittest, if he had not broken away from his routine way of thinking. Mahatma Gandhi could not have used the weapon of non-violence, non- cooperation and Satyagraha if he did not deviate from the routine rut of thinking. We have to change our beliefs that we don’t have the skills to make changes that are necessary. We can change our behaviour by trusting and fine-tuning our abilities and jettisoning what we believe is not our real self!
