Well, as last time - I've got overexcited two weeks earlier, completely over-thought the whole thing and started a blog. Before I've gone anywhere. This is a blog from my bed in sweet home Hinton Ampner. Don't get me wrong, (oh gods here come the Americanisms already) it's not a bad place from which to be writing but it's not exactly breaking new turf.
I had a thought and felt it pertinent to record it forthwith. Here goes.
Everyone is born equal - not in finance, health, circumstance - but in status, we are all born equal. Noone is better or worse than anyone else.
Ghandi is definitely better than most everybody. He has spent eons becoming better than most everybody. And the key thing that makes him better is that he is humble and does not think himself better.
In short, everyone has to earn the right to be considered great. You are not better than anyone. Just because you are more academically gifted, or you have a quicker wit, you are prettier, you are one of those lucky people who has grown up with a natural in-built supply of 'cool' (whatever the fuck that is) - you are not better.
Following a recent fit of nerves about making friends in my new surroundings (a bout of the adolescent 'what-if-nobody-likes-mes') I was given this advice: 'talk down to people. Pretend everyone else is clinically retarded. Laugh at them in your head'.
Well, that's the worst advice I've ever received...what on this Earth would give me the right to talk down to people I don't know, to make myself feel better? How is being patronising to potential new friends likely to help in any way? If there are people out there who really utilise this method of...err...Machiavellian self-reassurance, I invite them to stop, take a step back and think about what it is exactly that makes them so much better than everyone else. Cos to be quite honest if you do that you're a dickhead.
Whatever happened to being friendly, genuine, funny, sparkly, kind and open-minded?
We are all human. It is a knee-jerk reaction to judge and sometimes belittle. I'm no angel. But gooood grief - when I am meeting lots of New People in a v. short time, I will not be out to laugh at them all inside my head because correct me if I'm wrong on this - that will probably result in self-imposed ostracisation. The result of which will be self-kicking. Simple maths, no? New people + superiority complex = NOBODY LIKES YOU.
To be a better person, be a humbler person. Be a kinder person, be a more generous person. Be an empathetic and understanding person. Do not be a cold and arrogant person - stories of people who think they can get by as an island floating high on the sea of everyone else's assumed mediocrity NEVER END WELL.
Voldemort, right, he thought he was better than everyone in the World right and he got done by Harry Potter. If he hadn't been such an arrogant twat and shown a little remorse the seven pieces of his soul might have been put back together and there would have been some hope for him.
Don't be a Voldemort. Be a Harry. Or better yet, be a Ron. Everybody loves Ron.
Here endeth the lesson.
