Funny Side Up!

Life has this infinite propensity to throw up situations where you have only two genuine options before you:

1) You throw up your hands in exasperation and start working up a fit of anger.

2) You throw in the towel (metaphorically) and start laughing at the silliness of it all.

Recently certain events transpired in my life where I was tempted to take up option 1 but fortunately better sense prevailed and I ended up subscribing to option 2.

I wish I could reveal the entire sequence of events but perhaps the world is too small and more importantly, the people associated with the events are even smaller! That being the case let me try to sift sense from all the nonsense that happened in the recent past.

My job gives me the rare chance to interact with a wide range of people....allegedly the country's best and brightest. I won't challenge that contention, but I have to state that the nation's latest brood of intellectual stalwarts have incredible potential for absolute nonsense.

It's disturbing to observe that intelligent , competent individuals who have obviously scored so high in examinations, score so low in life's finer details. Competition is good as long as you are a good sport. Talent is a great thing as long as you don't fancy yourself as talented. And confidence, alas, is a world apart from arrogance. When all these unfortunate attributes add up you have the perfect prescription for absurdity.

In today's age of social networking there is a very virulent visual display of absurdity all over the digital realm. Narcissism takes an evolutionary leap thanks to Facebook....you see it in the form of pictures, videos and updates of all kinds. Recently I was exposed a particularly strong dose of this digital display which made me digitally sigh a couple of times on FB in the form of status updates:

1. 'Subtlety is a sublime art that is either lost on most or wasted on the rest!'

2. 'Some people really fool themselves that they are in paradise, others are fools in paradise who neither realize that they are fools nor that they are in paradise!! Is it irony of some divine origin?'

Nobody is immune to this phenomenon. Most of us have succumbed to the obvious attraction of posting updates which show us in the most flattering light. It is pardonable, we are only human.

But the matter becomes serious when a person internalizes the notion of superiority. When 'holier-than-thou' comes as naturally to you as breathing or sleeping. Then knowingly or unknowingly you create fences round yourself and before you know it you are all alone in your fortress. You may have built the fence to keep out others. But the tragedy is that they may not have wanted to come in at all in the first place! In the process of choosing your friends you risk the chance of ending up with none at all. Read Oscar Wilde's short story 'The Selfish Giant'. It makes this point so beautifully.

Which brings me back to my original conjecture. When we are up against somebody who is so obviously convinced of his/her superiority there are only 2 real options. And if you are gifted with a sense of humor, try to laugh at the pointlessness of it all. Anger, hurt and resentment can at the best give you a nasty bout of indigestion. Whereas when you laugh out loud, you are not only denying the person the opportunity of hurting but also ridding yourself of all negativity.

So laugh guys, even if the joke's on you. Eat your eggs sunny side up and live your life funny side up!