What defines us?

Was watching some random video on YouTube's recommended list and there was this talk of Oprah Winfrey. After building a school in South Africa and seeing the first batch of graduates getting out, she was delighted and called Maya Angelou to share it with her. She told her that she finally has her legacy in this world. But what made me think was Maya Angelo's reply to Oprah. Maya said,"You don't know what your legacy is. It's every life that you have touched"... That just triggered my think think think kind of mind.

I thought of those legacies as one defining feature of a personality. And suddenly realized that with such addition of new things with new realisations, the defining list is never going to be exhaustive and so never are we going to be, even nearest to define a personality in its whole. 

I also got to read yet another article that day in The Hindu. It was about Tiruvalluvar by Gopalkrishna Gandhi. He had written how Tiruvalluvar is label elusive, above religion and without boundaries. That article just made me realize how narrow the thought itself can be of defining something.

In an easy way to understand what I want to convey is--- Take a person 'A' 

What about him… is he good? His occupation, educational background, religion, gender,caste,hobbies, his eating habits, fashion sense, sense of humour, relationship, special skills, introvert or extrovert, achievements, social capital, economic capital, emotional intelligence….. We can keep adding things but it will always be devoid of some defining factor which will be elusive to our knowledge.

Funny thing is we had always been so restrictive about this approach. Mainly occupation and personal material achievements won the list and we felt as if that is what constitutes the whole being…

Humans grow through every moment of life on this planet, in this universe. Accepted, that some moments become defining but claiming them to be the only defining things is only the elusive.


#randomquestions


Prajakta Prakash

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