A drop of arrogance
Goes straight to the mind
It’s intoxication kills insight
Next, it attacks the eyes
Which fail to see others’ plight
It impairs the hearing
As they only hear what they like.
It also affects reasoning power
As all others in sight
Appear ‘fools’
‘Easy to manipulate.’
‘Puppets’, ready to dance
‘Dummies’, over eager to obey!
Arrogance accompanied by power
Creates insane authoritarians
Who think it is their right
To enslave all humanity
Who think they are always right.
Emotionally challenged, these
Arrogant autocrats fail to bond
With family, friends or employees,
As it is below their dignity to
Respect others’ self-esteem.
But he had more than just a drop
He had stumbled upon a draught!
So arrogance had wreaked havoc on
Whatever was left in his mind
All he could do was, install puppets
To dance to his tunes.
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I have already written about arrogance and how it can be harmful for us. If you haven’t read those posts and want to start from the beginning, you can click on the following links:
Arrogance becomes detrimental when we accept it as an essential part of our personality. Can arrogance be divested? It may be quite challenging but not impossible.
ARROGANCE…the word that conjures up negative images, the word whose connotation is often misconstrued, the word, which scares us without even touching us!
My experiences with arrogance have taught me some profound lessons. The day I tried to break it into small pieces and deal with it syllable by syllable, this is what I discovered:
We can turn it around into a positive word:
That is how you can revert arrogance, which is very much in your own hands.
Nobody except the arrogant can change himself or herself.
Only our inner voice can impel us towards change. When an arrogant person decides to develop humility, he or she has to overcome self-perpetuated attitude of being supreme.
It is the ego, which accentuates arrogance. When we recognize the power of self-effacement, we can accomplish a positive change in our personalities. Often we don’t make any such effort. We get so accustomed to riding the high sea that it carries us far into the realms of selfishness.
The solution lies in dropping the sails and anchoring our conceit.
Acceptance and respectare the two key words for exorcising the demonic powers of arrogance. When we start respecting others as equal human beings with same kinds of desires and emotions, when we start understanding that they too have a tender heart and get hurt by our outbursts, we begin to comprehend the subtle influence of being compassionate.
Compassion comes very slowly and only if we decide to expunge egotistical traits, which dominate arrogance.
The roots of arrogance lie elsewhere, probably in childhood or upbringing and therefore it is very essential to visit those corridors and make peace with those experiences, which are no longer relevant.
If you didn’t receive love and care in your childhood, you can’t bridge that gap now, if you crave for certain moments to return to soothe your soul, they can’t. If you were bullied and you are hiding behind arrogance to cover it up, you have to break that shell and come out.
We can embellish our personality at any stage of our life.
Read more about personality enhancement in my book.
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I have always been deeply disturbed by intolerance and wanted to write about it but I have always turned my face the other way, trying to avoid it, knowing well how deep-rooted this sentiment is and how less I know about it.
I have tried to understand it in my own limited arena, how it develops and gets aggravated within the families before it spills out onto the streets.
Quite early in life, I had my first encounter with this emotion albeit I had no idea that people call it intolerance and it is so widespread! With the passage of time I learnt that intolerance is the refusal to accept, appreciate and respect the views, beliefs or behavior of a person or a social group.
I also learnt that we are not born with intolerance. Children are too innocent to understand the depth of this term, which is defined for them by their parents, environment and the society in which they are raised.
So it is a learned behavior. It is most often trigged by fear or insecurity that people face in their immediate environment.
It is a universal phenomenon…in some societies it is camouflaged under empathy and help that leaders try to offer, only to exploit it for their own benefits, which could be political, religious or related to caste and color.
Mahatma Gandhi felt, “Intolerance is itself a form of violence and an obstacle to the growth of a true democratic spirit.”
We inflict this violence on each other, without caring for the emotional hurts it causes especially on young adolescents who have to deal with it in educational institutions and neighborhood.
Role of families: As a child, whenever I visited my grandmother’s home, I saw a weird form of intolerance towards the working class, who could not mingle with the landlord families, had to sit on the floor and eat in their own plates, which had to be kept separate. Feudal masters looked down upon them just because they were poor and worked in their fields.
It is quite obvious that the children of such houses would grow up with the feeling that this kind of behavior was right and that is how it got embedded in social set up. It could never be rooted out despite the best of opportunities and laws. It still exists in a veiled form because certain people refuse to accept the underprivileged and the downtrodden as their equal. They share their beliefs and opinions with their children in their own narrow-minded way and the vicious circle continues.
Role of groups: There are fanatics who want to underline the importance of their own caste, region, race or religion. They create such groups to highlight the superiority of their race or religion. They keep raking the age-old traditions to prove that their ancestors had rightly created the class divide. Their constant endeavor is to sow the seeds of narrow-mindedness in the impressionable minds.
The atrocities of the past, the brutalities, which were inflicted by a certain group of people, are never buried. They are kept alive by talking about them so that the posterity remembers the prejudices, so that the youth can be instigated in the name of never ending vengeance.
Education, awareness and globalization has done little in eradicating intolerance, which is much more deep-rooted than we think. It is associated with the biased views of a parent, a teacher or a leader whose influence on growing children cannot be prevented.
Role of educational institutions: Children who study in minority schools and convents are conditioned to follow a set of rules, which contribute immensely to their development. They may not be told that others are lesser than them but the way their own beliefs, principles and philosophies are drilled, do create a subtle feeling of superiority for their own group.
Some of those who are confused try to rationalize those beliefs and principles but many more are easily carried away by the radical groups and that is how fringe elements get an impetus to keep themselves active and alive to exploit the sensitive matters.
This is my third post on Arrogance, which is inspired from organic traffic.
This word – ‘Arrogance’ is detested by all due to the negative energy it carries but we all like to know more about its aspects and dimensions. Have you read how it can harm our personality?
Arrogance leads you into a self-created glittering world, making you the protagonist of those realms and the throne that feeds your ego is placed at a higher pedestal. It is very difficult to look at others with compassion and love when you gaze from that exalted throne.
Self-love dominates your thoughts and all those around you appear to be your friends and admirers.
Arrogance dwells in such a shallow zone where relationships do not hold any relevance. So friendship and arrogance can never move hand in hand.
Self-importance guides arrogance:
You have to step down from that platform of superciliousness to befriend people but your haughty nature doesn’t let you step down. You think you have a lot of friends and indeed you can see yourself surrounded by many people.
Admirers can never be your true friends. They would surround you till you entertain them, party with them and let your money flow freely for their benefit.
Arrogance detests emotions:
The only emotions that seem to be of any importance to arrogant persons are those, which concern them. If they have been snubbed at some stage of life, they carry that pain in their heart forever. If they have not been treated justly, they would call the whole humanity unjust. When they hide their true emotions from their friends, the latter can understand their demeanor.
Arrogance doesn’t trust anybody:
Trust is the main plank of true friendship but arrogant people are always on their guard. Their relationships remain superficial. They fail to open their heart to their friends and therefore their friendship never crosses that line of mutual trust. Those who try to be friendly with such people often discover this trait and walk off, feeling cheated.
Nobody likes to be judged and controlled:
Arrogance is that intoxication, which never lets you come to your senses. Those who acquire this trait think highly of themselves and try to judge even their friends. They manipulate them in various ways, which is always disliked. How long can any friend bear such a behavior?
Arrogance mocks at humility:
Such people consider humility to be a weakness. They look down upon benevolent and humble friends, which exposes their own hollowness. Virtues are very hard to maintain and therefore all those who try to endure the behavior of arrogant persons give up out of disappointment.
Arrogance thrives on dominance:
Would you like your friend to control your thoughts, influence you into doing something you may not be comfortable with? Arrogant people are compulsive rulers. They want to govern your feelings, your time and even your likes. They take pleasure in planning for all the people around them.
Do you have arrogant friends? Do you like their company? I would love to hear your views.
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Thank you for your support. Please add your valuable comments, they are much appreciated.
I have already written about arrogance and how it can be harmful for us. If you haven’t read those posts and want to start from the beginning, you can click on the following links:
That is how you can revert arrogance, which is very much in your own hands.
