Yesterday I attended a presentation by a person with an amazing, influential personality. The audience enamored by his personality and willingness to be associated with him, asked him if he was on Facebook or Orkut. He said “No I don’t believe in them, I am a private person”. This triggered a subconscious thought that was incubating in my mind for a long time. I asked myself “Are majority of the great and influential people socially challenged?”
Some analogies ran across my mind “Albert Einstein and Thomas Edison”, great scientists known for their innovative bent of mind and scientific contribution to the society. They had numerous students, colleagues, teachers, scientific peers but hardly had friends.
“Mahatma Gandhi and King Martin Luther”, successful leaders known for their courage to define history and transform nations in their unique way. They had numerous mentors, followers, disciples, supporters and peer fraternity but hardly had friends.
“Narayan Murthy and Ratan Tata”, successful entrepreneurs, great and influential personalities known for their vision and values with which they redefined modern India. They have mentors, followers, well wishers, supporters, colleagues and peer fraternity but have only handful of friends.
It seems, all these people have differentiated themselves from the rest of the mass because they had/have unique thought process. They are public figures but they belong to none. The evident reasoning that goes with the fact that they do not spend more time with friends as they spend more time with themselves, interacting with their conscious. As rationale defines, they are more aware and responsive to their inner voice and would not like that inner voice to fade away by external social networking noise. Consequently they are self sufficient in their own ways and are incompatible/different in their ideologies from rest of the crowd.
As they grow up the ladder, they grow lonelier because such paths are rare, isolated and are not often travelled by many people. I suppose this very fact doesn’t scare these souls as they are obsessed by a larger vision, a bigger cause and relentlessly follow their inner voice.
Hello Srujana,
ReplyDeleteIt was a different thought about socializing vs leadership. But I defer with your ideas and I feel there couldn’t be any inverse correlation between the leaders and their volume of friends.
We never saw the private life’s of successful leaders around the world.
My squabbles( :-) ) goes something like this :
These are the peoples who carry a great influence on the other people’s life. So most of us would prefer to be called as close friends rather being known as follower. They connect huge network through there single point of their existence. I agree, the number of followers could be huge when compared with friends.
On contrary, we (dreamers) limit our mode of contact to few specific groups with respect to age, sex, location, etc.. Since we don’t carry huge circle of followers it could be off beam to predict the successful people had a lesser friends.
The day when we are in there position, I don’t feel we would have lost our beloved ones for the taste of success.
Maybe during my next examination, I can give more views on this topic.
Regards,
Dinesh
Hi Dinesh,
ReplyDeleteIt is wonderful to have your inputs on this topic. It reaffirms the fact that all of us think very differently on such issues :-). I agree with you that there can’t be inverse correlation between leaders and their social acquaintances, rather through this blog I have tried to indicate that there is a positive linear correlation between leaders and their social acquaintances (which in this blog, I have classified as peers, mentors, followers etc but not friends). I agree with you that some great people are very influential and that is the reason they are surrounded by many people. But I believe they prefer to call them as peers rather than friends, because the common prophecy of Gandhiji, king Martin Luther, Nelson Mandela and Narayan Murthy (Just few example amongst the list of great influencers) is to be kind and good with everyone but intimate only with the virtuous. That’s why I say that “They are public figures but they belong to none”. Your thoughts otherwise are also acceptable. It was interesting to know your views; I look forward for more of such thought provoking interactions.
Thanks, Srujana
Wow!!! Excellent way of putting your thoughts…
ReplyDeleteReally the choice of words and the sequence of occurrence were wonderful. Now, I’m an admirer of your writing…
I agree with your assertion that “They are public figures but they belong to none”. And I accept all your comments and none of the additional information’s are against your views.
1. We would like to call our self as a peer of someone only when we can’t have personal gathering around. Example : I’m a fan of Kalam and friend of Srujana though I admire her.
2. Peer and friend are two different characters. They appear different to different grassroots. If a peer or a friend of someone makes a difference in the similar field he will recognized in a different way. People give more importance to their achievements. Nehru or Nanadan Nilekani are distinct achievers when compared with Gandhi or Narayan Murthy. For the external world we may consider them to be follower or a friend but never knew the internal relationship between them.
3. Finally, we can stay alive only through our deeds(followers and friends are born with this achievement). And great people are never lonely : - )
After life, the real asset is measured through the changes what we bring back to humanity.
Amazing!!! Articulation of thoughts. I couldn’t have seen better clarity and lucid explanation of the views, but for your articulation. It increased the activity of my neurons and engaged them into some thinking (which they seldom do):-). I completely second your views on this, without any reservation. Something that really touched me was your statement that “We stay alive through our deeds” I agree and would like to take it further and state that we stay alive through our thoughts which eventually transform into our deeds. I agree when you say that “Great people are never lonely” I would like to take it further and state that they are always in true company of their inner self (which is a pool of abundance of energy connected metaphysically with the entire universe). That is probably how they understand the infinite significance of “I” in the larger scheme of things.
ReplyDelete