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What it means to be a Non-Conformist?

Having taken the advice from some great bloggers in past few days, most influential of them being Bryan Allain, master blogger and blog-coach, whose "31 Days to Finding Blogging Mojo" I just finished. One key advise which I wanted to stick to was to write more and write regularly with a sense of predictabiloty..
That I wanted to, but at the same time I was also flooded with many other sane voices advising me many methods to improve on my writing.

I read it somewhere that one good thing about writing as an occupation is that you can be working when doing nothing. So over the weekend, I did nothing, and was working in mind over what are the changes that I could bring about in the manner in which I blog, and in the nature of my blog itself. That work left little time to focus on what I should write for the week. Some changes of the blog, are sure to come in the coming week or so (may be including the name).

A thought was lurking somewhere in the back of my mind, and I finally decided to focus on at least one advise to begin with, which is to be regular with your blog.
Picking on that thought, I am writing this piece.

 The world has been a mess in general, of late. Rather, methinks, it has been messier than it has ever been, or I have been suddenly getting more informed regarding the general messiness of the world we live in. I am an ill-fit in the social structure, and though I am nudged by my spouse several times in a day to get myself better equipped to handle the nuances of social interactions, I have failed to gain anything is this respect. It has been such a long since I have felt the deprivation in this specific faculty and all my attempts to doctor my personality to conform has failed so miserably that since quite some time, I have even started taking pride in this handicap of mine.
This was to happen when the second serious book you have read in life was Hindu Mythology, Mahabharata, which culminates into a futile war leading to a solitary exit of the main protagonist, Yudhistira, from the world, and the third serious book you have read was "The Fountainhead" by Ayn Rand. I am not even going into the fourth one which was "Thus Spake Zarathustra", which eventually threw me into the avalanche of all Nietzsche books.
Anyways, the sane advise of my better half not withstanding, emboldened by the fact that I have survived this far in this big, bad world (where I work in the sales of high technology equipments), I have come to look at what others would consider my short-coming, in today's network driven world as my strength. It frees me from the basic human intent of attempting to please everyone.

It is so futile a struggle that it can well be safely termed as biggest human folly. You attempt to gain friend (which you will loose, believe you me), and in process you loose yourself. What provoked my renewed faith in my long held belief was an event which transpired in the Gym that I go to. Forced by a middle age looming large over my head and a growing paunch, I joined the Gym. After couple of days, an attempt of over-enthusiastic trainer, saw me staying off it for three days, going back eventually to tell him that I will be exercising on my own and he is to direct me only if I do something insanely wrong.
Free of any guilt of not being able to give proper attention to me, trainers, all three of them went back to focus on two young girls trying to exercise and loose weight. One of the trainer, overly anxious to please the pretty girl, was trying to help her exercise and was making the comments taken from the movies enacted in the scenes where the modesty of some lady is attacked. This is something which on street will attract police action. The girls, initially taken aback, looked at each other, went into silence.

One of trainer, then tried to lamely explain," Oh he is just being funny"

The girls giggled and the silence melted.

I, was shocked. What is wrong with these girls, they think this behaviour is "in thing". They do not want to be type-cast sisterly or what people call in a condescending manner, behenji.

I could see from where this stems. They feel that the obnoxious behaviour is a part and parcel of the society, or at least that segment of society which we consider as successful. I wanted to tell them that such sensibility is acceptable in the society to a very limited extent, and even if my estimation were totally wrong and on its head, any behavior which is not matching your value system, should be protected, avoided, discouraged, around you.


You do not need to conform to what you do not agree with. Being a non-conformist is not an eternal rebel, a non-conformist in a true sense ought to be most at peace. A non-conformist lives with committed to his set of value systems, without riders. Those values are linear and objective and they define the individual, and they define the world around him. You do not bend, you do not yield and worst of all, you do not giggle on it. You do not have to be marching on the streets with flags for being a non-conformist. You need to be clear about what you conform to, for it will define clearly what you do not, must not and can not conform to. It is not impossible, it is costly, but then every thing in life is. Every time you condone an act which is contradicting your value system, you are encouraging the perpetrator to go one step further. You please those around you, and go home broken, with your head down in shame and a heart bitter with guilt, as you let yourself down. If you feel lonely, because of it, you ought to learn to live with yourself, which will be easier once you make peace with yourself, and as Nietzsche would advise, Flee to your solitude, away from the market-place.

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