Pleasing Others – Traveling Mark

Reign of Sheep

Shortly after I started this blog, as soon as I commenced my round the world trip, I realized that every info you can find about travel through third world countries on the internet as well as in popular travel publications is wrong. As if written by dim-witted imbeciles, every single travel guide in existence had dangerously misleading information, picturing travel as a positive and uplifting experience that involves encounters with friendly and hospitable locals and introduces cultures which despite poverty and threats of oppression always embrace peace and generously give even if they don’t have enough for themselves. What a crock of shit.

Because no realistic travel guides existed, the only thing people traveling abroad had to work with were these piles of whale poop. As a result, charts of people murdered, robbed, raped, scammed and otherwise abused abroad continued to grow exponentially. Yet instead of smacking themselves over their heads with a rock, these sickly deranged blockheads continued to spread their falsity while circle jerking one another all the while people out there were being mistreated having wandered ill-informed into the realm of inherent crime.

Enter Traveling Mark

Seeing all the misleading information the world of travel was oversaturated with, I stepped in and started sharing the full picture. If there was anything positive to share about the place I visited, I shared it, but if there was something negative, I shared it just as well. I told it like it was, delivering the full story without ever skimping on truth. I also never softened things up – if someone was a rip off artist, I called them a rip off artist, not a misunderstood individual who’s had challenging life and is struggling to find his place in the world.

You’d think the world would come together to thank the first ever writer of full truth about the world of travel, but the world remained silent. It remained silent because of fear of those who made themselves heard loud and clear right away – the very dim-witted imbeciles who wrote all those misleading half-truths on travel blogs and in tourist guides prior to induction of Traveling Mark.

Like a mob of gangsters standing by to “take care” of anyone and everyone who messes with their “business”, these loud-mouthed, dim-witted deluders showed me instantly why there is a complete lack of truthful travel guides and why no one dares to speak in favor of one. The slew of hate speech and threats was alarming but I stayed true to my cause and remained adamant to provide truthful information even if it meant going alone against the entire world.

What happened next was astounding. One by one, the bloggers who attempted the same truth telling but were trampled shut by half-truthers’ army of sheep started to re-emerged and contacted me with letters of admiration that I survived the lynching by the dim-witted imbeciles and not only that – showed them all a finger and came out on top. The momentum I created resulted in an unstoppable boom of full truth sharing travel blogs which ultimately shut the dim-witters down. They’re still used to yapping their loud mouth at anyone who doesn’t abide by their rules and have their own sheep circle-jerk one another as they gang up on non-compliers, but their undisturbed and unchallenged reign is over and done with.

The Half Truther Army

My path to victory wasn’t an easy one, though. I didn’t give in to the sheep for one second, yet it puzzled me beyond words how well manned the half-truther army was. Among them you could also find individuals who seemed otherwise reasonably capable so why would they trade their wits for half truths? Why would they not share the whole truth having had the capability to see it? And why would they not only fail to share the whole truth, but fight to their last breath on behalf of dim-witted half truthers as if theirs was the law? This were the questions I kept asking myself for the longest time until bit by bit, the complete picture started to come together.

Fear of Reality

How much many travelers suffer from the Fear of Reality became clear early on. It is definitely one of the chief factors influencing the weak minded individuals even if their intelligence level is otherwise pretty solid. It takes an exceptionally strong person to handle the truth so walking around with rose-tinted sunglasses permanently mounted on a face is a simple alternative that allows one to retain their false sense of security their weak minds can’t otherwise live without.

As with virtually everything that dumbs people down, those who suffer from Fear of Reality can’t see its effect on them and think they are entirely immune to it. The denial and inbred belief that they are completely above it makes them more susceptible to attacks on anyone who dares to point it out. From there, there’s just a small step to attacking anyone whose view of the world is unmarred by presentation of false colors, such as that of people with rose-tinted sunglasses.

More elaborate break-down of the fear of reality and its effect on travellers can be accessed on this page.

How High Can You Fly?

Another significant factor that dooms otherwise seemingly capable individuals into a life of a half truthing sheep is a severe lack of ability to actually see the full truth. Those who base their living on taking advantage of others mastered the art of presenting obstacles before the eyes of their chosen victims in order to make their scam appear legit.

That’s why even an otherwise intelligent and educated person can become an easy victim of a scammer and come home believing that that missing money was his own fault though he doesn’t remember where exactly he misplaced it and will continue perceiving the perpetrator as his friend and someone who actually helped him. The victim would also go as far as to attack anyone who attempts to fill him in by clarifying that he was scammed.

Again, as with everything else that dumbs people down, this inability to read between the lines to see things for what they really are is something nobody who suffers from it would admit to willingly. This one more than anything, actually. People who suffer from this shortcoming, regardless of how otherwise intelligent and educated they may be, are so dumbed down they will take scammers’ lie for their own and will defend it at any cost. Typical thinking would go something like this: “The person smiled, hence he cannot be a scammer and anyone who dares to say something negative about him will have me on their ass.”

Here’s a more elaborate post on why how high you can fly determines how far you can see.

The Facebook Sheep

I’ve had more than a fair share of encounters with the Facebook sheep and it’s just never pretty. I understood very early into my trip that enslavement is as enslavement does. Most dim-witted imbeciles only get as far on their journey to freedom as quitting work to travel. They end their corporate enslavement but swap it with thorough gadget and/or internet enslavement. I’m not even getting to money enslavement cause that’s already a bit too much for dim-witters to swallow all at the same time.

The Facebook sheep who travel and blog about travel don’t travel for the sake of travelling, but to broadcast their travel to all their friends. All they ever have on their mind is Facebook and the first thing they do when they get back from a trip outside is to get on their Facebook to post updates.

They don’t really interact with locals – they talk to them to get something that would make a good blog. They don’t really go to see a sunset – they take a picture of it for a better update than their friends made. They don’t really sample food – they merely mark the dish’s name so they can post about it.

Facebook sheep plain and simple travel to broadcast their travel on Facebook. They always think of that next Facebook update and of what picture to take to go with it. With their mind always on Facebook, they’re never really fully present in the moment so there really is no surprise that they don’t see the full truth. They only see that which makes the most interesting update for Facebook.

Being humans, we are not very good multi-taskers. Each of us likes to think that we can multitask, but every scientific and social experiment into it proved otherwise. Can you really blame a Facebook sheep for falling short of their travel experience with many things going unnoticed when their mind is focused on shooting a video that will make it on their next post? You truly can’t because it’s a natural human shortcoming but why do these Facebook sheep then insist on arguing with sane individuals who had the same experience but their mind was not on Facebook hence they got full picture of the reality?

Living For the Herd

One of the most influential downfalls of many, not just the travel half truthers is the curse of pleasing others. The sheep live for the herd. In travelers’ case – they don’t travel for the sake of traveling but for the sake of positive press. They want to be coveted by their Facebook friends so they limit their experience to interactions and reports that deliver the thumbs-ups.

It is understandable that because the herd of sheep composed of dim-witted imbeciles and their brown-nosing followers without brain is huge and easily capable of trumping anyone who separates themselves from the herd by being able to think for themselves, most people will volunteer to becoming a sheep because that gives them an approval of the herd.

Whereas the capability to think outside the box and rise high above the ground to see the forest for the trees (see the How High Can You Fly section above) is seen as outcast-ish by the herd, those who demonstrate the ability to think independently are frowned upon and ultimately singled out and victimized. Because nobody wants to feel singled out and victimized, people will sacrifice their individuality to become the respected sheep of the herd. Whether what they think and how they act is right or wrong becomes irrelevant and renounced in favor of whether what they think and how they act is favored by the herd.

The dedication to please the herd before anything else is one of the most dominant characteristic of vast majority of individuals alive today. As such, this characteristic, moreso than any other, would never be admitted to by anyone who suffers from it and is entirely addicted to it.

Further information on the Curse of Pleasing the Herd can be found on this page.

The Reign of Sheep

So eventually, bit after bit, the entire picture of why people, including those who seem to be otherwise mentally capable of thinking for themselves are so determined to pass on the half truths about the world of travel came together. They are the Facebook addicted sheep who fear reality and lack the capacity to see forest for the trees. But most of all, they live for the herd.

There are basically two types of people in the world today:

Individualists
Sheep

Sheep feel safe and secure being part of the herd. They abandoned their individuality and modified their thoughts and actions to match those approved by the herd. Like children following the Pied Piper into their doom, the sheep will jump into a well if other sheep of the herd do it too. And if someone were to come along to tell them that they’d be stupid to jump into the well for they would needlessly drown, they’d respond by attacking said individual and backed by the rest of their herd, they’d trample the individual for his nerve to think for himself and speaking in opposition to the herd.

The sheep are many, whereas the individuals are usually alone. That’s why many otherwise capable thinkers succumb to pressure and become one with the herd and start acting sheepish. If one sheep takes a step to the left, all other sheep take a step to the left. If one sheep bleeps, all other sheep bleep. To say something that’s not sheepish when sheep are around would get the whole herd bleeping and that’s pretty much guaranteed to shut any innovator up.

If you do as the sheep do, you’ll gain their respect so next time, if it’s you who bleeps first, all other sheep will bleep in unison with you. If you don’t do as the sheep do and dare to think for yourself, the sheep will bleep in unison against you, calling you a freak and forcing you into becoming a loner.

As for me – I’d rather be alone than become a sheep. I can look in the mirror and not see a puppet. And that is more important to me than all the bleep fanfare in the world.

What Will You Think Of On Your Death Bed?

Fight and you may die. Run and you’ll live. At least a while. And dying in your beds, many years from now, would you be willing to trade all the days, from this day to that, for one chance, just one chance, to come back here and tell our enemies that they may take our lives, but they’ll never take our freedom?

— William Wallace’s speech to the troops in the movie Braveheart

Happiness is a Journey, Not a Destination. Many a wise man said it before me and I have foremost respect for everyone who gets to understand the real meaning of it. If you put focus on a retirement, you’re putting focus on a destination, robbing yourself off the opportunity to savor the journey, aka every simple moment of every single minute. But don’t get overly content when you grow enough to stop focusing on a destination. At the end of the day, it’s not the pictures you took that matter, no matter how sparkling they are. At the end of the day, it’s also not that amazing social networking update that you had posted that matters, even if it results in hundreds of replies praising you for amazing thoughts.

Photo: What Will You Think Of On Your Death Bed?

I know a man who spent more than half a year in a coma after a blood clot blocked the flow of oxygenated blood into his brain. Young man, a biker, he was strong and athletic. A cool guy, good friend of mine from back home. Doctors had to remove a quarter of his skull to operate on his brain. He’s out of coma now but doesn’t know how to talk, doesn’t know how to walk – he’s learning things you would not expect a man in his 30’s to have to learn. Doctors say he’s lucky to be alive and to still be more or less himself after such a long time in a coma. Up until recently, not many believed he’d ever talk again.

Having known him well, it was hard for me to comprehend the fact that 30 years was all he got to say what he needed to say. He was magically back with us, but he couldn’t talk. Chances are, you who are reading this, like me, still have your means to voice your thoughts. Whether verbally, or through written accounts on the internet, your voice can be heard. How are you using it? What are you doing with the time you have? We all get a limited supply of time and when that bit of it that’s allocated to you runs out, what will your last thoughts be?

Will you think of all the pictures you took? Will you think of all the great articles you posted on the internet? Will you think of how that update you made got on the first page of your favorite social bookmarking site? Will you think of…?

Much of what is of utmost importance to you now, would quickly lose its spark if it was you laying in bed with tube sticking out of your mouth helping you to breathe. There would be people around you, talking to you, but none of them would know whether anything that’s being said is also heard.

You can take time to get to know the person on the inside, or you can continue to compete for attention on the outside. You can live a life true to yourself, or you can live the way others expect you to. You can spend so much time at work you’ll miss your children’s youth, or you can open yourself up to new opportunities and create unknown space in your life. You can realize that happiness is a choice, or you can remain stuck in the comfort of familiarity.

I now understand that we are constantly made to see all the things we are not. We literally piss away our precious life minutes by polishing our image in the eyes of others not realizing that we get none of them back. When you’re lying on your deathbed, will you be glad you spent life’s precious minutes doing what you did today?

Tree: The Fraud Documentary

Only a day after posting the Curse of Pleasing Others post, I stumbleed across this video which proves the point I was making to the dot. Titled Tree: Documentary, the video attempts to introduce a person by the name of Neil who, as the video claims, seeks personal enlightenment and to achieve it, he wants to embark on a 49 day long fast during which he would not eat, only drink coconut and water. The video simply could not have shown up in a more opportune moment but without further ado, let me explain exactly why I find it to be a fraud and why it proves that the curse of pleasing others is embedded within the population more deeply than anyone would care to admit.

Tree: The Fraud Documentary

The following is how I perceive the video based on how it is presented. This is my opinion, yours could be different:

The Tree: Documentary video start with an introduction of a character named Mark Matthews who wastes no time and starts right off with big time phrases that would put even the most senior marketing expert’s sales pitches to shame. The video doesn’t even get past the 20 seconds mark when the fact I brought up in the Curse of Pleasing Others post – that everything people do, they do it because other’s are watching – becomes clear beyond all doubt. In his well tailored sales pitch, Mark Matthews goes as far as to say that the Tree: Documentary project is not some David Blaine super stunt, but a documentary about a man trying to find himself. Nothing could be further from the truth. The perception of fraud gets clearer as the video continues.

Mark Matthews talks about his friend Neil who, as he says was experiencing personal crisis and went through some major stages of depression. Neil allegedly did not know what he was good for and what his purpose on this planet was. So to find the answers, Neil decided to meditate and pray underneath a tree for 49 days. Up to this point, the introduction to Neil seems pretty valid and matches what many people go through at some point in their lives. So far so good.

It all starts getting really strange soon after this quick introduction of Neil, when Mark Matthews mentions that while undergoing his 49 day long fast, Neil would be accompanied by a team of doctors and scientists who would monitor his health, and would also be accompanied by spiritual mentors and teachers who would introduce him to the world of personal enlightenment and gained consciousness.

Amazing, beyond professional sales pitches Mark Matthews is capable of pulling off continue with what seems to be an utter ridiculousness when he brings up great spiritual leaders of the past, such as Jesus Christ, Buddha, Prophet Muhammad and Moses. He subconsciously compares the quest of his friend Neil to what these huge figures underwent during their time. Mr. Matthews does it in such graceful matter, that average viewer of the video would not even realize at that point that none of the four, unlike Neil, had any doctors or scientists surround them and be there for them every second of their quest.

Needless to say, in true spirit of what just about every person follows these days, it didn’t take long before Mark Matthews made it clear that this “spiritual journey” is done to show off. That there would be a whole filming crew documenting everything that is going on with the quest to ensure that the exposure from everyone’s involvement is massive. The real, albeit hidden message appears to be: “Screw spiritual enlightenment, we want viewers, followers, commenters and subsequently invitations to festivals, theatrical releases, award ceremonies and what not, but nothing before worked for us, so we’re using this spiritual enlightenment fraud scenario cause it has a better chance to fool people”.

Second half of the video is about the main purpose of the Tree: The Fraud Documentary – money. Mark Matthews lists all of the personnel and equipment that will be involved in the production of the documentary, because it’s the documentary that this is all about. Again, screw “spiritual enlightenment”. It’s only a tool used to get attention.

The seal of approval is put in place when Mark Matthews makes it clear that if they don’t receive $40,000 in donations by August 15, 2011 – in his own words: “all bets are off”. In my mind, this translates into: “Neil is seeking “spiritual enlightenment” to find his place and purpose in life, but only if people give him and his crew $40,000. If people don’t give them the money, then he’s not interested in “spiritual enlightenment” and will not go ahead with his 49 days long fast”. Based on all this – isn’t my perception of Tree: Documentary as FRAUD perfectly justified?

With all of his cry baby talk and effective mind twisting lines, Mark Matthews does an amazing job distracting from what seems to me as the fraud part of the documentary. Throughout the video, he keeps people distracted from realizing that Neil doesn’t seem to give two rabbit crap balls about spiritual enlightenment. Mark Matthews is clearly an amazing marketer, though. He seems to be able to lie into anyone’s face without breaking the cover with wrong expressions. If I wanted a marketer, especially if honest marketing failed and I need to take on “new approach”, he’d be the man I’d seek. He would also be the last person I would want to get into verbal fight with as he would likely destroy me before I could open my mouth. But as someone who can see the forest for the trees, I hate to break it down and uncover what appears to be the true purpose behind this documentary.

Conclusion

If you make your personal quest to find yourself a super-stunt with press releases and cameras following your every step, then you are not really looking to discover yourself. You are looking for attention. I’m sorry Neil, but Buddha didn’t go on his quest with intentions to boost his popularity ranking. He went to truly discover himself and find his real purpose. In order to achieve that, he didn’t plot to take a team of promoters along to make him more popular than he was before the quest. Quest for self discovery is not the same as quest for public image boost. It takes true strength to go on a true quest. If what your video presents is a true reflection of what this project is all about, then you are still very, very far from finding what you are good for. The path to yourself is not the same as the path to please others.

The Curse of Pleasing Others

Our life is an endless sequence of undying efforts we put forth in a struggle to please others. In other words – much of what we do, we do to please others. We modify our behavior to subconsciously please our friends and relatives, we also do it to please those we don’t know (nor do they know us) but come across in our day to day lives, and we also perpetually strive to please those we haven’t even (nor ever will) come into contact with:

Photo: Everything We Do Seems To Be Done to Please Others

we struggle to pay our bills on time to please credit rating agencies
we struggle to eat healthy so we can improve our physique because then we will be perceived as more attractive by others
we struggle to earn good money so we can live in a house, drive in a car, wear latest fashion that will make the heads of others turn
we struggle to write interesting blog posts, twitter updates, facebook profiles because we want others to subscribe, comment, follow, brown-nose, circle-jerk, or otherwise become parts of our network of admirers

Here’s the kicker – most people are so obsessed with pleasing others, they find little time to please themselves (and I’m not referring to sexual self-gratification). Dedication to pleasing others seems to have become the life’s mission of the many of us. It’s become an obsession, a purpose, a meaning of life. We are judged by and gain social status based on how many people we impress throughout our journeys through life. The “what would people say?” is the very question that, whether consciously or subconsciously, pops into our minds and becomes the determining factor of the course of our actions.

I could also put it this way: we live our lives by responding to external demands in an anticipation of external rewards, such as acceptance, status or security, all the while sacrificing our internal needs. Instead of striving to be the best we can be, we act in response to seemingly urgent demands from external sources. The time, that precious commodity we have only a limited supply of is thus taken away from us to belong to somebody else by our own doing.

1 – Take the First Step in Faith…

My journey to rejuvenated self awareness and self realization started when I reached my personal spiritual awakening and began to question the purpose of dedicating the best days of my life to work. The idea of working for the man while I’m young, strong, healthy and fit seemed as absurd as the idea of putting off the fun things this life has to offer until I retire – aka until I’m old and wrinkly and unable to do half the things I can do now. The latter became even more absurd when I realized that one may not even live long enough to reach their retirement age, in which case all they would have experienced during their journey on the planet Earth is work. Just how must it feel when your time to reap the benefits of lifetime dedication to work never comes to be?

2 – Don’t Stop After Your First Step…

I set myself free from the clutches of corporate slavery and started to roam the Earth a free man. But the journey didn’t end there. As I found out soon after, there was more to self realization than freedom from corporate lifestyle. A major next step in my personal growth came to be with a realization that I was a slave to gadgets. What is freedom from one set of shackles good for if you slip into a different set right after? The outcome is the same – you are a slave – only this time your shackles have cute paintings on them. The knowledge I have gained from this experience was – if it dictates your life – you’re enslaved to it, even if it’s something you enjoy and would voluntarily go for.

It was the same type of feeling I felt when I started hating photography even though I loved it my whole life. When surviving as a professional photographer became tough and I had to take gigs I did not enjoy, it was taking the fun away from the whole thing and I hated every minute of it. But as soon as I left pro photography and started taking pictures as a hobby, capturing only what I had genuine passion for, the love and joy for photography came instantly back.

3 – It Gets Worse

Then came the challenge from hell. I was able to set myself free from corporate slavery and gadget entrapment, but having gotten this far – further than most people do – I couldn’t just stop there. I had to poke where it really hurt. There was still one set of shackles and this set holds grip so tight and snug, its existence is not admitted to, not even by the most self realized individuals. It’s the internet.

We the generation of today are so addicted to the internet, it’s not an addiction anymore. It’s part of our daily lives. Everything is on the web, is controlled by the web and is determined by the web. It only gets worse if you’re a person like me who makes his living on the internet. When you’re at that point, then internet gets to decide your every next step. Running an online based business requires one to be constantly on line. Monitoring traffic, responding to online requests, moderating comments, looking for security holes, patching security holes, analyzing server logs, tweaking server settings to improve performance, optimizing database structures, upgrading to stay on top and writing fresh content are just a few of the daily tasks a webmaster has to go through on the daily basis. And that only scratches the surface. It’s the tip of the iceberg the highly competitive world of webmastering represents.

Because of that, despite my apparent freedom from corporate slavery and gadget entrapment, I could not consider freeing myself from the internet as my whole life depended on it. Worse yet, the idea that the internet could be a set of shackles I have not identified yet was not even admitted in my mind. Afterall, how could internet, a tool that makes our lives what they are, be ever considered a tool of enslavement?

Yet that is exactly what it is. For example – while on my tour through Asia, I could not consider a trip to Myanmar because of scarce availability of the internet and heavy censorship throughout the country. If I found myself unable to access any of my sites, I would be unable to monitor them. As a result, if there was a malicious activity on any of the sites, I would be unable to respond before it wreaked complete havoc on the server. And the stress of living with the possibility that there could be something undesired going on with my sites while I’m unable to check and see whether my concerns are founded or not would drive me insane. Hence, a trip to Myanmar was a no option.

Willing to admit to it or not, considering how far I got with my journey of self awareness, it was only a question of time before the shackles the internet represented were identified and ultimately admitted to as such. I’m still not free from this set, but success to every mission begins with giving the problem a name, calling it for what it really is, admitting that it is in fact a problem regardless of how difficult this admission is to make, and if you’re able to do just that, you’re off to a good start. The rest is about putting thoughts into actions but action is what would never come to be unless you square up with it on the mental level first.

The Curse of Pleasing Others

It took me two years to thoroughly identify and admit to each of these sets of shackles. Two I was able to successfully shake off, third I’m still dealing with and as the struggle rages on, I came to understand what really was behind all this. It’s the struggle to please others. It’s the very thing I mentioned right at the beginning of this article. This constant struggle to please others so we can feel relevant is what makes us so selfish. It’s what destroyed true community spirits and replaced them with faux community life we know today.

One would have to visit remote tribes that live far away from civilization to see what community spirits mean. Elsewhere it has long been dead. When you see the hunters leaving the village for a day to hunt, gatherers leaving for a different part of the forest to gather wild edibles, those who are sick or injured staying in the village along with those who look after the fire, bake bread or weave baskets that would be traded off with other tribes. At the end of the day, each bit of food the village as a whole produced is put together so everybody can eat. Hunters don’t just hunt for themselves and their families. They hunt for the village. Bakers don’t just bake for themselves and their families, they bake for the village. Everything is shared – work and food. And when whole village is fed, they gather round to celebrate another day of good life together – as a community.

In cases like these, where real community spirits still exist, people don’t do things to please others. Hunters don’t go hunting to show off that the buck they took down was bigger than one their neighbor got. They don’t put fragrant aftershave on to appeal to women late at night. They don’t need to build their house taller than their neighbors’ – because they are a community. They don’t do things to please others, they do it to survive. Their way of life may seem savage to us, but when you get past this narrowminded point of view (most people never get there in their whole lives), you’ll see that they make far more sense than us.

Granted, one could bring up an argument that without the struggle to please others, we would not have progressed as a civilization. And it is true. People train to be good at sports to show off, and they invent things for the same very purpose. If it wasn’t for this insatiable greed and selfishness, people would retain the community spirit and with it, would lose the desire to get more admiration than their neighbor. Nothing pisses an individual off more than success of their neighbor. The hatred this feeling evokes drives a desire to steal that spotlight off for themselves. Some do it by getting more creative, some by backstabbing, but they all have the same common denominators – zero community spirit with surplus of greed.

It is also important to distinguish between a real community spirit and fake community involvement as we see in modern societies today. People get rewards for their “community involvement” – you could even find lawyers who offer legal advice “pro bono” yet the real reason why these people got involved in the community in the first place was… out of selfish greed. It’s because they knew people were watching and they knew it would be noticed, hence they did it. It was once again a case of doing things to please others. In other words, it’s an engagement in activities one would not do if there was absolutely nobody to see them.

Are You Living to Please Others?

Imagine a scenario from a cataclysmic movie comes true and whole civilization is wiped out with you being the sole survivor. Imagine you look out of the window and there is absolutely nobody out there. You walk outside and keep walking for days on end and there is no one but you. Would you bother putting a make up on and dying your hair before heading out? How about this scenario:

Being a girl and the only survivor of a major cataclysmic event you stumble across a chest. You are happy to have found it cause you could use some clothes and shoes before cold of the night takes over and blisters on your feet get too painful. In one of the compartments you find really sexy high heels, shiny latex miniskirt and ripped up tank top held together with safety pins. In another you find manly looking coveralls, rubber boots and checkered flannel work shirt. Which set would you take to keep fed and hydrated? Which set would you take if no catastrophic event took place and there would be people out there the same way they are now?

One more time with the catastrophic event scenario – if you found a notepad and a pen and decided to keep a journal, would your journal entries be the same as your facebook updates today? Go back to your facebook, twitter, blog or whatever else you use and read the last 5 entries you’ve made. Read them now after you have just read my article about the curse of pleasing other and see if you can reflect on yourself and find yourself in it. Have you written them in a way so as to earn extra brownie points from your peers you anticipated to read it? It takes a strong person to see forest for the trees. Are you her or him?

Do not confuse genuine compassion of one human being towards another with selfish desire to drive up one’s ego by pleasing others. They are not the same thing. They are only parts of the same spectrum, but are at exact opposites of it.

Conclusion

We, the men and women of the 21st century grow up completely disconnected from our inner selves. We have lost the ability to speak to our souls and understand what dwells within us. Instead of looking for our place on the planet Earth, we look for attention. Instead of discovering our purpose in life, we live to show off. We dedicate more time and effort establishing our social status than we do anything else. What we choose to wear, what we choose to say, what we choose to write about, where we choose to go or what we choose to do – we do it, admittedly or not, with foremost interest in boosting our own image in the eyes of others.

It is all about the struggle to please the society, because we have come to believe that the society will reward us by recognizing our “contribution” to it. We want admirers, we want fans, we want our name to be in a newspaper or on a TV screen. We want people to talk about us and most of all – we want them to envy us. We are not interested in things that may advance us independently, on a personal level, unless we get a chance to show it off and gain media coverage while we’re at it.

You don’t see people retracting to the wilderness to live as hermits in order to gain closeness with nature and a better understanding of their place in the awareness. You only sometimes hear about them because if they do something like that, they do it as an attempt to gain fame. To them, albeit claimed as a primary reason of their move, the potential of inner personal development by taking the step is secondary to the social status a “sacrifice” of this type would reward them with.

Finding someone who wouldn’t desire the public to gasp for the air when they hear their story is nigh impossible in this day and age. Those who take steps that appear to have been taken with intentions to grow as individuals take them with loud announcements to the world via internet or other media. I truly find it hard to accept that a person who keeps posting Twitter updates once every hour about his journey to self discovery is merely interested in finding his place in life.

To rephrase – all we seem to care about is our social status. We do things to please others and want everything we do to be seen. Screw inner growth if we can’t brag about what it took us to get where we are and how we struggled to pull it off. We desire nothing more than to be envied. We want it so much we determine the steps we take based on the likelihood and the amount of envy we get in return. We want a job others will envy, we want to drive a car others will envy, we want to have a body others will envy, we want to have done something others would wish to have done before us. It’s falsehood in disguise. We think we are advancing in lives, but all we’re doing is pleasing others. By doing so, we’re letting others to dictate our lives as the directions we choose, we choose based on what social status they would reward us with. We have lost touch with our inner selves and become, in simple terms, strangers to our own souls.

This is what pleasing others, disguised as a journey to self discovery looks like.