Well,let's start off with the dictionary meaning of 'pretence' or 'pretense'(both are correct!)
pretence: The act of holding out, or offering, to others something false or feigned; presentation of what is deceptive or hypocritical; deception by showing what is unreal and concealing what is real; false show; simulation; as, pretense of illness; under pretense of patriotism; on pretense of revenging Caesar's death.
Now,I'm pretty sure that you've got a person in mind when you read the description above.... Let's try to do a character sketch of this person...
Start off by answering these questions....
- What acts can you remember that make you think of this person as a 'pretender'?
- Were those acts done to you and hence you've been offended?
- Or were they done to someone you know (either close or distant)?
And lastly,ask yourself..(and your self only!) Was it really apt to give him/her that tag or did I give in to anger or contempt?
If you answered 'Yes' to the last question, read on.... If you answered 'No'....please do read on...
We humans hardly have a clue to most of the things we do in life... We bask in the glory of being the most intelligible creatures on this planet and yet, commit blunders each day that bring shame to our sensibilities. That important task you missed, that interview answer that could've been answered better,that single gesture of gratitude that could've been shown,that exam that you could have studied for(!)........
What I'm trying to arrive at is that being human we're bound to make mistakes....This blog in its entirety should be named as "rememberyouarehuman.blogspot.com".. That has been my attempt at writing this blog....Why do we bother pointing fingers at others unclean images when we're no picture of divinity ourselves? No one, I mean.... NO ONE has the right to look down upon the acts of a person you dislike for a variety of reasons as being acts of pretence or falsehood...!
Few lines after I started this blog,I wanted to stop...Delete it or redo it some other day... But I remembered my true nature... It is obvious that I,like all humans,place myself on a pedestal of righteousness (whether you admit it or not!)... Standing on this pedestal it's quite easy for me to slot people as 'Right' and 'wrong', as 'True' and 'Pretence' and so on....It is a part of our sub-conscious to do this....
Recall all the events when you made a rash decision about a human and regretted it later... yeah...rings a loud bell doesn't it....? We do it without knowing abt it, without thinking abt it, hell...without even wanting to do it!!
NOTE :: I've reserved this blog for a few hand picked friends for the simple reason that my thoughts should not be misconstrued to be something that they are not.. I'm not trying to be a philosopher or a psychologist or a psychiatrist.... I'm just expressing my thoughts... I'd like you to read them as you'd read any article unbiased by the fact about the author.. Any feedback, positive or negative is welcome... I mean that..
Hoping to get some input on the posts from you guys soon... I need to know if this is a common thought pattern or is it just things my mind is concocting... Thanks for reading...
9 comments:
An outright fact!!fantastically penned...very true that no one has the right to 'look down' upon such acts of a person tagging them to be his/her phony deeds..but but but when we knw that that person's pretension is harming us isnt it completely rational to fret nd fume regardless of the fact that we are'nt holy saints ourselves!!...nd hey the character sketch u made me do helped me realise many facts abt many ppl ;)..thanks dude,it simply works!!
i totally agree that it is rational to vent your anger over someone... but a pretension is just a fire show... Any real harm that may occur is by giving air to the flames.. thanks for that comment.. :)
When we try to sketch a character.. we do get a few faces.. but dont we see our own faces.. doing few (not just few its many) stupid things.. Man you really made me see few faces but ya we are humans and bound to commit blunders.. but we do get chances to correct ourselves, and we should..
its true we have no right to look down on others acts..
this writing is just superb in explaining a human being..
Greatwork brother :-)
thanks abhi bhai... name unscrambled...!!
Hmmmm....that's a neat flow of thoughts and you've certainly made your point out there!
well, this is just what I feel about pretense. Honestly, some find it to be foolishly optimistic ( yea, they use that term) though I agree to totally disagree. Why not see it this way? An act of pretense or even a veil that hides your personality is exciting at times and makes life lively. I am making a very controversial statament but I still am hoping you'd see what I mean.
For starters, like you said, none of us have any right to talk of someon else being a pretender coz' each of us is one. We never ever really show our true self at all points.Or do we? Coz' if we did so, I cannot imagine the consequences. Going by the definition of the wword "pretence/pretense" , I'd just add " an act a human does every single day" in the dictionary. How many times do we follow rules and regulations without wanting to, thus portraying an unreal-we though we are busy muttering something else all along?
Pretense/ce is what we show in our daily life. Maybe coz' we are humans.And since this is trite, we tend to pass of these and cling onto those acts which seem to have affected us only.Human again,maybe.
And isn't it a wonderful mask we have? The human-mask.Any blunder we commit is followed by a realization, a sheepish grin with that much cliched "I'm only human". Maybe we need to use this when we are pointing at others too.And then , we even assign degrees to pretense/ce where a few are within forgivable limits and some not. It is like this perception of good/bad , you know. All subjective out there and none knows what's really right. Phew! I'm right now amidts an ocean of thoughts and am afraid of putting up a post here.
Am still amazed as to why we never really get an image of "we" when we talk of pretense/ce and busily rummage thru' the persons-in-my-life list. Human, maybe. But sure makes life interesting :)
Too long a comment. Apologies. Am human, after all :P
dude..... best thing in life is to ignore things/ppl u dont like...!!!
paalige bandiddu panchamrutha antha shiva antha iddbidu....!!!
@piyu
Hey....nice thought process you started...Liked the idea you presented me with...I'd like to add this article to the blog posts as your article,if that's alright...
@nikhil
Sure thing dude...I'm pretty chill nowadays..but it's still somethin we gotta think abt... he he..
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