Everything You Work For.

I don’t get why people make stupid statements like ‘Work hard enough so that you don’t have to introduce yourself’. I find it so funny because even the most renowned people in the world are humble enough to introduce themselves when they meet new people. This isn’t about your hard work, it’s about your identity. It’s about knowing where you come from, no matter what heights you have reached. I read this particular statement from somebody today and I spent a good time thinking about it. But no matter which angle I took, I couldn’t find a single positive thing about it.

First of all, I may have mentioned it a lot more than I would like to, but I don’t get why people keep glorifying the idea of working themselves to death. Even the most workaholic people I know have admitted to wanting a life outside of work so that they can kick back and unwind to find themselves. It is so unhealthy on so many levels to want to work yourselves to an obsessive point. I really don’t get it, and I know for a fact that people who push hustle-culture endorse a pretty exhausting kind of life with dull, dingy colours.

Besides, what is the point of all that hard work that you’ve done to carve an identity for yourself if you’re just going to let people assume what your life is like and who you are as a person? When you don’t introduce yourself as a person, all anybody is ever left with is what they’ve heard about you. And what people hear is often just a grossly exaggerated version that is very far off from the truth. I don’t understand why people would want to erase their entire identities like that. Don’t you think it is much better to be known for who you really are?

I mean, people are going to assume all kinds of things about you either way. Maybe it is better to not give them further reason to exaggerate the things they might end up saying about you. At any point in time, who you are to the world is never going to be who you really are to yourself. Maybe in a perfect world, but not in reality. In reality, who we are to the world is a very different version of ourselves, and you know what? We don’t really care about that, do we? But you know that we do care about what people think. At least to some degree.

Besides, if you think anybody ever dreams about working themselves into exhaustion, you seriously need to look around. That’s clearly not how things work.

Just something I needed to put out there.

Featured Image by Nastuh Abootalebi on Unsplash