Recently, we convened a team meeting to launch my next book.
“I would like to publish my collected analects (blog posts). Each would be headed by a coloured photo.”
Ida immediately piped up with “You can’t do that. It’s too expensive to use colour. It runs contrary to the normal books you publish. Why can’t you follow everyone else and concentrate on your individual travel books?”
My response was just as rapid.
“Tell me what the cost will be to prove the venture too expensive. If we follow everyone else, the best we will be is second best. If you tell me my chance of becoming a successful writer is less than 1%, I would far rather rely on my own faith and fail, than follow others.”
Unknowingly, Ida had summoned a whirlwind of ghosts from my past. All of them miserable and self-destructive.
At high school, my uber-ambitious, East Indian mother forced me to take Science and Math, rather than my loves of History, Geography and Languages. “It’ll be much easier to enter Oxford or Cambridge.” I failed my exams.
“Having failed, you can either retake those exams or train as an accountant.” How could I graduate as an accountant if I couldn’t add up? I continued to fail.
What eventually got me through? Sheer stubbornness (I couldn’t stand being constantly branded a failure) and an alignment of the stars helped me become a CPA.
But it took 40 years to escape the drudgery and strain of maintaining and practising as a mediocrity in the field. Nearly a lifetime, impossible to recoup.
For some reason, I was redeemed. Yet how many have forfeited their destiny by adhering to the expectation of family, friends, and colleagues, suppressing the voice within them?
Fellow accountants, on the eve of retiring, bitter at the lives they have led, relying on ever-dwindling savings, frightened of their future. Bob always wanted to visit Spain with his wife. Whilst saving for retirement, his wife died. He now suffers from crippling arthritis in both legs, precluding any chance of travelling. Nasim, a Muslim of one sect, fell in love with a man from another Muslim sect. He reciprocated. Both refused to disrespect their family and community by marrying. Now in their sixties, they still pine away for each other, remaining spinster and bachelor alike—their secret entombed in sorrow.
What value or happiness do we bequeath ourselves when we conform to the expectation of others? If we so devalue ourselves, what value do we encourage others to place upon us?
